Biden holds small lead over Trump nationally: poll

Former Vice President Joe Biden holds a 4-point lead over President Trump in a new national survey released Thursday.

The latest Monmouth University poll finds 48 percent of respondents support Biden over Trump, who received 44 percent of the vote. That’s effectively a statistical tie, as the survey has a 3.6 percentage point margin of error. 

Five percent of voters said they’d support an independent candidate, and 3 percent said they are undecided. 

The poll is mostly unchanged from the same survey last month, which found Biden leading Trump 48 to 45. 

“The static nature of these results suggests the president’s response to the pandemic is certainly not helping his reelection prospects,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

A plurality of voters, 36 percent, said Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic will not impact his reelection efforts. Thirty-one percent said his response makes his reelection less likely, compared to 27 percent who said it is more likely he’ll get reelected.

After getting an initial job approval rating bump in the weeks following the coronavirus outbreak, Trump’s approval rating has since slipped.

The Monmouth survey found that 42 percent of voters have a favorable view of Trump, compared to 50 percent negative. Last month, Trump was at 46 positive and 49 negative. 

Biden’s favorable rating is split, with 41 having a positive view and 42 viewing him negatively. That’s mostly unchanged from last month, but it’s a strong improvement from February, when Biden was at 40 percent positive and 53 percent negative.

About a quarter of all voters say they’re more enthusiastic about voting in 2020 than they were in past elections, compared to 17 percent who said they’re less enthusiastic. That’s down from February, when 39 percent said they’re more enthusiastic.

Since February, there has been a 22-point drop in enthusiasm among Republicans, an 8-point drop among Democrats and a 17-point drop among independents.

The Monmouth survey of 743 registered voters was conducted April 3-7 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.