Poll: More voters trust Biden to contain coronavirus spread

More voters trust former Vice President Joe Biden to contain the coronavirus pandemic than President Trump, according to a new Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday, suggesting that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is making inroads on the issue.

Forty-two percent said that they trust Biden more to handle the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus — a 4-point gain for the former vice president since a similar poll in mid-March. 

Trump, meanwhile, trails Biden on the issue by 7 points, with 35 percent saying they trust him more to contain the spread of the disease — a 3-point drop since March. 

Nearly a quarter of the 1,994 registered voters surveyed, 23 percent, said they either don’t know or have no opinion on whom to trust more to contain the pandemic. 

Still, Biden’s overall standing in the race against Trump hasn’t seen much of a surge amid the pandemic. The latest tracking data from Morning Consult shows him leading the president in a head-to-head match-up 46 percent to 41 percent. That largely tracks with his 4-point average lead over the past two months. 

When it comes to their handling of U.S. relations with China, neither Biden nor Trump have a clear advantage in voter trust. Forty percent said they trust Biden more, while 38 percent said that they trust Trump more, a statistic within the poll’s 2-point margin of error.

China has become a political volleyball in the 2020 presidential race, with the two candidates accusing one another of mishandling relations with Beijing. A plurality of voters — 48 percent — blame China for the crisis stemming from the coronavirus pandemic “because the virus originated there,” according to the language from the survey.  

Thirty-eight percent said that the U.S. deserves the blame, because of its poor response to the outbreak.

Still, a majority of voters, about 58 percent, want the U.S. to focus on cooperating with China to combat the coronavirus. Another 30 percent said they would rather have the U.S. focus on holding China accountable for its role in the spread of the virus.

The poll tracking the head-to-head match-up between Biden and Trump surveyed 28,159 voters from May 11 to 17, and has a margin of error of 1 percentage point.

The Morning Consult poll measuring voter trust in the candidates’ handling of the coronavirus is based on responses from 1,994 registered voters and was conducted from May 15 to 18. It has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.