[ad_1]
NEW YORK: Democrat Joe Biden outpaces President Donald Trump by 12 percentage points nationally among prospective American voters, according to a Reuters / Ipsos opinion poll that also showed the number of persuasive voters was down compared to ago four years.
The Sept. 3-8 poll, released Wednesday, found that 52 percent of likely voters planned to support Biden, while 40 percent would support Trump. Three percent said they would vote for another candidate, and only five percent said they were still undecided with less than two months to go before the November 3 presidential election.
The poll showed that the number of voters who had yet to endorse a major party candidate was less than half what it was in 2016, and that Biden currently had the advantage of securing the national popular vote.
READ: At a campaign rally, Trump intensifies attacks on Biden by China
Even if the remaining undecided voters supported Trump, the poll showed, he would still lose the popular vote to Biden.
Trump may still win re-election, however, without winning the national popular vote. The US presidential elections are not decided by national vote, but by who wins the Electoral College, a competition based on the count of victories from state-by-state contests.
Four years ago, Democrat Hillary Clinton garnered nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, only to see her Republican rival narrowly win the Electoral College and the presidency.
This was the first time that the Reuters / Ipsos poll measured support for the 2020 candidates among potential voters.
When measured by registered voters who include those least likely to vote, Biden leads Trump by 8 percentage points, compared to his 7-point lead in a similar poll last week.
READ: Portrait of a choice: America’s career boils down to six decisive states
PANDEMIC, TRUST IN THE GOVERNMENT
The poll showed likely voters are primarily motivated by the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 186,000 Americans and left millions out of work, and has restored confidence in the government.
When asked what was driving their election for president, 28 percent said it was the candidate’s perceived ability to handle the coronavirus, and 23 percent said it was the ability to restore confidence in the government. An additional 19 percent said it was the candidate’s ability to boost the economy, and 14 percent said they were looking for a candidate who is “tough on crime.”
51% of likely voters said Biden would better handle the US coronavirus response, while 38% said Trump would be better.
But Trump has the upper hand when it comes to his perception of who would be “tough on crime and civil unrest,” with 45 percent choosing Trump while 40 percent saying Biden would be better.
In the economy, neither candidate has an advantage among likely voters: 45 percent of likely voters said they thought Biden would be better for the national economy and expand the workforce, while 45 percent said they thought that Trump would be the best.
Biden, who has led Trump for much of the year in most national opinion polls, has benefited from a recent migration to the Democrats among some of America’s most trusted voters: college-educated whites.
While non-college whites still largely support Trump over Biden, the president has not cemented the dominant level of support he enjoyed with that group four years ago when he was running against Clinton.
So far, opinion polls from other media outlets show Biden with a slight advantage over Trump in a handful of competitive states, including Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida. That lead also appears to have shrunk in some cases in recent weeks.
The Reuters / Ipsos survey was conducted online, in English, across the United States. It collected responses from 823 likely voters, including 390 who identified as Democrats and 351 who identified as Republicans. The survey has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of approximately 4 percentage points.
