Almost 2 in 3 Massachusetts Democrats, left-leaning voters want Biden to step aside: Poll

A majority of Massachusetts Democrats or left-leaning voters say they want President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, according to a new survey.

The Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll, released Friday, found 64 percent of Democratic or left-leaning voters in the historically progressive state say they want a different candidate to be the top of the ticket in November. Only 29 percent said they were “satisfied” with the incumbent being the nominee.

“What a difference a presidential term makes,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, in a press release. “It was not even four years ago that candidate Joe Biden came into Massachusetts and beat sitting U.S. [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren [(D-Mass.)] and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders [(I)] in the Democratic Primary without really campaigning in Massachusetts.”

Biden continues to face political headwinds in the wake of a rough debate performance last month, which raised questions about his age, mental fitness and ability to recapture the White House in the fall. Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton (D) was one of the first House Democrats to come out in favor of the president withdrawing from the race earlier this month.

“President Biden has done enormous service to our country, but now is the time for him to follow in one of our founding father, George Washington’s, footsteps and step aside to let new leaders rise up and run against [former President Trump],” Moulton said on Boston-area radio station WBUR at the time.

Other findings in the poll included 69 percent of Massachusetts Republican or Republican-leaning voters saying they are “satisfied” when it comes to former President Trump being the GOP’s nominee. About 28 percent of the same group of voters said they want a different person to be the party’s nominee.

Voters were also asked about their likeliness to vote for Trump after he survived an assassination attempt last weekend during a rally in Butler, Pa., just outside Pittsburgh.

Around 7 percent of respondents said the event made them “more likely” to support the former president, while 3 percent said they would be “less likely” to vote for Trump. A wide majority, or 88 percent, said the incident would not affect their vote, per the survey.

The issue areas voters in the Bay State are most concerned with are the future of democracy (33 percent); the economy and inflation (26 percent), and immigration and border security (21 percent). Despite the recent shooting, where a bullet grazed Trump’s ear, only 4 percent of respondents said gun control was an important issue when considering who to vote for in November, the poll found.

The Suffolk/Boston Globe poll was conducted Tuesday through Thursday, featuring 500 Massachusetts residents and has a margin of sampling error of 4.4 percentage points.