The news site Puck
published a leaked memo Tuesday from Open Labs, a leftist research outfit that does polling for various Democratic groups, revealing that President Joe Biden’s debate performance last week may have been the final nail in his political coffin.
A poll conducted in the 72 hours following the debate found that 40% of respondents who voted for Biden in 2020 now think the Democratic incumbent should end his campaign, while 45% suggested he should stick with it. Just two months ago, pollsters found that only 25% of Biden 2020 supporters wanted him to step aside, while 62% wanted him to remain in the race.
Swing voters also signaled that they felt Biden was finished, suggesting by margin of two to one that he should scuttle his campaign.
According to Open Labs, the declines in Biden’s vote share against former President Donald Trump in the 72 hours following the debate amounted to the “largest single-week drop since horse race tracking began in late 2021.” That is especially bad news for Biden since his vote share was already four percentage points lower — and eight points lower on margin — than his winning vote share in 2020.
“Underpinning the decline is an increase in already-high concerns about the President’s age, and a growing split among Democrats about what should happen with his candidacy,” said the memo.
The research group found that 69% of voters were either very or somewhat concerned about Biden’s age impacting the job that he is doing as president — representing an 8% increase since a pre-debate poll. The same was true of 45% of 2020 Biden voters, 68% of 2016 and 2020 swing voters, and 92% of 2020 Trump voters.
‘Trump is now within striking distance in a variety of states that weren’t considered campaign battlegrounds last week.’
A closer look at key Electoral College states painted an even more dire picture for Biden.
In a multi-candidate ballot, Biden suffered a margin drop of around 2% in every battleground state, such that now in Pennsylvania, for example, Trump leads Biden by over 7%. Prior to the debate, Trump only had a 5% lead. Trump leads Biden by 2.8% in New Hampshire, by 4.2% in Wisconsin, by 6.9% in Michigan, by 8.8% in Nevada, by 9.7% in Arizona, by 10.1% in Georgia, and by 10.6% in North Carolina.
The poll also suggested Trump has gained a half-point advantage in New Mexico and Virginia. Biden’s pre-debate leads in Colorado and Maine have also largely melted away, putting the race within roughly 2% in both.
Puck’s Peter Hamby, who indicated he received the Open Labs memo from an unnamed Democrat, wrote, “The most worrisome angle to all this is that Trump is now within striking distance in a variety of states that weren’t considered campaign battlegrounds last week.”
Biden is not only hemorrhaging the support of voters but also favorability.
Open Labs provided a line graph charting the share of respondents who answered “more favorable” in response to the question, “Would you say that what you’ve heard about Joe Biden in the last week makes you think more favorably of Joe Biden, less favorably of Joe Biden, or does it not make a difference?”
While the “more favorable” line has been largely been trending downward since Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the graph took a nosedive last week to an all-time low of 27%.
“We saw similar magnitude drops in tracking during the Afghanistan withdrawal and classified documents case, but this is the lowest this metric has been since tracking began in 2021,” said Open Labs.
Some have suggested online that the Open Labs memo is a strategic effort to cultivate Republican complacency and suppress the vote. If, however, it has an anchorage in reality and Biden ultimately heeds his family’s
recommendation to stay in the race, then he might end up being swept away in an electoral landslide.
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