Former President Donald Trump appears to have an edge over President Joe Biden heading into the first presidential debate on Thursday, according to a recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey, conducted from June 20 to June 25, found that 48 percent of voters would choose the former president if the 2024 election occurred now and only Trump and Biden appeared on the ballot. Forty-two percent of the 1,226 registered voters surveyed said they would vote for Biden, while 10 percent said they "don't know" or "refused" to vote.
Preliminary polling leading up to the November election has shown that both candidates will likely clash in a head-to-head battle for a second term in office. In recent months, Trump has shown to fair better in key swing states like Georgia and Pennsylvania, which both voted blue in the 2020 election. But Biden appears to have a hold on young voters, who have played a key role in Democrats' election wins in recent years.
The latest New York Times/Siena College poll, which according to analysis site FiveThirtyEight is the best pollster in the country, found that voters largely disapprove of either candidate winning a second term. Nearly 60 percent have a "somewhat unfavorable" or "very unfavorable" opinion of Biden. Around 52 percent said the same thing about Trump.
The majority of voters also said that there should be a different presidential nominee for both major political parties. Thursday's debate, hosted by CNN in Atlanta, will arrive before the Democratic and Republican conventions have officially selected their nominees for 2024. The president and Trump garnered enough delegate votes during primary races to be considered the presumptive nominees for their respective parties.
Sixty-four percent of respondents said they want a different candidate than Biden for the Democratic nominee, while 55 percent said they want someone other than Trump as the GOP's presidential pick.
While both candidates face pressure from their own parties, Trump appears to have a stronghold on Republican voters. Despite the former president last month being found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, 68 percent of respondents said the conviction made no difference in their vote.
Around a fifth of Republican respondents said that Trump's conviction made them more likely to support him in November, while only 5 percent of GOP voters said that the verdict turns them away from the former president.
Trump's major sore spot may be among independents. According to The New York Times/Siena College poll, over half of independents said that they believe Trump received a fair trial leading up to his conviction, and 26 percent said Trump's guilty verdict makes them less likely to support him in the fall.
Other polling since Trump's conviction on May 30 has also found that the jury ruling could deter independents from backing the former president.
Newsweek reached out to Biden and Trump's campaigns via email for comment on The New York Times/Siena College poll.
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Kaitlin Lewis is a Newsweek reporter on the Night Team based in Boston, Massachusetts. Her focus is reporting on national ... Read more
