#Joe Biden maintains double-digit lead over Trump in new poll

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Democratic presidential candidate amd former Vice President Joe Biden
Patrick Semansky/AP

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden continues his double-digit lead over President Trump and is now significantly ahead with senior voters, according to a new Monmouth University poll released Thursday.

The former veep has a 12-point lead over Trump nationwide, 53 percent to 41 percent, according to the survey of 733 registered voters taken at the end of June.

Voters over the age of 65 were also far more likely to back Biden, 59 percent to 38 percent, giving him a 21-point lead over the president among seniors as the nation experiences a new daily record in coronavirus infections.

“Trump showed in 2016 that he can thread the needle, but these results suggest the president has even less room for error in 2020,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

“He must convert some of those unlikely supporters if he is to win a second term,” he continued.

The president still leads with white voters without a college degree but faces significant hurdles this election, including the fact that fewer voters have a negative opinion of Biden than they did of Hillary Clinton in 2016.

According to the new poll, Biden’s favorability rating is 10 points higher than Clinton’s was heading into the 2016 election, while a fifth of the voters surveyed said they didn’t have a good opinion of either candidate.

“Trump’s problem is that voters who aren’t enamored with either candidate tend to go for change,” said Murray.

As the two septuagenarians duke it out over who has better cognitive abilities, more voters in the survey actually said they felt confident in Biden’s mental and physical stamina than the president’s, 52 percent to 45 percent.

Biden’s lead has increased in every Monmouth University poll since March and recent polls have also revealed Trump is lagging behind his Democratic opponent in six battleground states as his administration is rocked by both the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest.

Trump allies insist that pollsters have been wrong about Trump before, pointing to the fact nearly every poll predicted Clinton would win in 2016, and say they will overtake Biden once the two men are allowed to enter into direct combat on the campaign trail.

However, Biden has continued to gain on Trump, leading by 9.3 points according to the latest RealClearPolitics average poll, and there is no indication when the president will be able to start holding large-scale rallies, his preferred method of campaigning, as the virus rages.