CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said on Tuesday that President Joe Biden is polling horrifically and any other Democratic candidate may do better against former President Donald Trump.
Biden talked with a raspy voice and trailed off during his Thursday debate against Trump, prompting Americans to worry about his age and competence for another term in office. Enten on “CNN News Central” said Biden is polling far behind Trump after the debate and that he’s unsure of whether any other Democrat could perform worse as the party’s nominee.
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“These numbers are atrocious for Joe Biden. That’s the only way you can put it. I guess the good news, when you match him up against Donald Trump, is that he hasn’t lost any ground from where he was back in April. But he was trailing in April by six points and he’s trailing by six points now,” Enten said. “And I just think you have to take back a step and look at where we were four years ago at this point. Joe Biden was leading Donald Trump by nine points. This is just a completely different race, one in which Donald Trump has led basically continuously, at least during 2024, and one in which his lead, if anything, is holding or even getting larger right now, high single-digits.”
“And I think there’s, of course, the big question, is: could another Democrat do better than Joe Biden against Donald Trump? And this new poll says, or at least suggests, that perhaps they could, because take a look here. Yes, Joe Biden is trailing Donald Trump by six percentage points, but look at this. Versus Kamala Harris, the vice president, it’s just a two-point race with no clear leader,” he continued. “So when I look at polls like this and you see the first call for Joe Biden to get out of the race from a member of Congress on the Democratic side, I don’t think polling like this will stop those calls. I would only expect them to get louder if polling like this holds in other surveys.”
Democratic Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett on Tuesday became the first congressional Democrat to urge Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, saying he does not believe the president has a strong chance of beating Trump after the debate.
“This is a fight for the center of the electorate,” Enten added. “It’s a fight for independents … Donald Trump leads among independents by 10 points when faced off against Joe Biden. But among independents, those voters that, of course, Donald Trump won in 2016 and then lost in 2020 to Joe Biden, you can see that Kamala Harris is actually ahead by three points. She’s doing better in the center of the electorate.”
Democratic megadonors reportedly discussed holding an intervention to persuade Biden to drop out shortly after the debate. One of Biden’s favorite columnists, Thomas Friedman, who writes for The New York Times, called on him to step aside, as did the NYT’s editorial board.
“Now, of course, Harris is not as well known as Joe Biden. She’s not as well known as Donald Trump either. But if you look at this point, right at this time, what you see is that 22% of voters have no opinion of Kamala Harris,” the data reporter continued. “Either they have no opinion or they’ve never heard of her. Compare that to 8% for Joe Biden, 7% for Donald Trump. So at this point, in my mind, she’s a generic Democrat. As she gets better known, those numbers against Donald Trump, given that Donald Trump is not popular at this point, those numbers can close even more. At this point, looking at this data, I am not really quite sure that Democrats can do any worse than they are doing with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.”
