America's Talking - Poll: Third Party Candidates Boost Trump’s Lead Over Biden

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

(The Center Square) – Former President Donald Trump is narrowly beating President Joe Biden in a head-to-head faceoff going into November, a new national poll shows. The Center Square’s Voter’s Voice poll conducted with Noble Predictive Insights was released Wednesday, showing Trump beating Biden 46%-45% with likely voters. The rest are unsure. When you include options to vote for third party candidates as well, Trump’s lead over Biden grows. When the poll includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein, Trump’s lead grows to 3 points. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAelib, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Thursday, March 21st. New data dropped this week from the Center Square Voters Voice Poll that shows former President Donald Trump with the slightest of leads nationwide in a head-to-head matchup with President Joe Biden. But that lead widens when voters are given the option to also select among third-party

candidates, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornell West, and Jill Stein. The same polling also shows President Biden's approval rating remains underwater heading into November's election, particularly with independent donors who likely will determine the outcome of the race. Joining me to discuss the latest to the Center Square Voters Voice poll is Casey Harper, Washington DZ Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, you wrote about these new poll results this week. Let's start with the presidential matchup. What are your takeaways? Yeah, I mean, you see a really interesting lead here for former President Donald Trump. I think, you know, of course, you remember in 2016, when Trump pulled his upset victory over Hillary Clinton, of course it wasn't upset. And so Trump was

behind the entire race. And then somehow November came. You know, everyone has their theory on how it happened, but Trump was able to beat Hillary. And this time, you have a totally different story entirely. You have Trump going in as a slight frontrunner. And as you pointed out, there are still third party candidates in here who take this Trump's lead out of the margin of error and make it, you know, a real substantive lead. When you look more closely at battleground states, you see that Trump is winning, you know, in most of these battleground states, which is really where it's most important. The national poll is interesting. It's helpful for Trump. It's helpful for fundraising, momentum, media, a lot of things. But ultimately, it's going to come down to, as we all know,

a handful of states in the electoral college. And when you start looking through those states, you see even more good news for Trump. You know, Biden has a, you know, a couple of bright spots. There are a couple that are tied. But Trump is performing very well in these swing states. And another thing I'll point out, Dan, before I handed back to you, is there is a real demographic swing on Trump's behalf. And so, you know, going back to 2016 once more, we all remember that Trump was considered racist by the media, by all of his opponents. he was repeatedly attacked as a racist candidate, a racist man for his strong immigration stance, for some controversial comments he made. But what we see is that Trump does very well with Hispanic voters for Republican candidate. And he actually beats Biden by almost 10 points with

Hispanic voters. So for all of the Democratic Party's outreach to Hispanic voters, for all their work to call the Republican Party racist, it's been like, you know, Trump has been like Teflon and it just hasn't stuck to him. and Trump has 48% of Hispanic support compared to Biden's 39%. That number is quite startling, Casey, because that's a big turnaround from 20. I just want to take a moment here to note to listeners that the Center Score Voters' Voice poll is among the most comprehensive in the country. We polled more than 2,500 registered and likely voters, 2,510 to be exact,

And that total includes 1,04 Republicans, 1,126 Democrats, so slightly more Democrats than Republicans. And 340 true independence, as you note is your story true independence are those who don't lean Republican or don't lean Democrat. They go in with a clean slate when they go and vote. Casey, let's just talk briefly about the difference between Trump over Biden and a one-on-one versus Trump, over Biden when you pull in the independent candidates. That essentially means the independent candidates are taking more support away from Biden than they are Trump, correct? Yeah, that's right. I mean, it shows that Biden's support is soft that there's many candidates who are voting for Biden, but it seems more so because they don't want to vote for Trump. And so as soon as you give them an

alternative, like RFK, where they don't have to vote for Trump, but they don't have to vote with Biden, they're eager to take it. And it's not an instance. significant amount. It extends Trump's lead from one percentage point to three points. So, you know, really triples Trump's lead over Biden. In some of these, you know, counties and districts where only a few thousand votes can make the difference, a third party candidate can certainly swing what is really a close race in either direction. And these independent candidates will be on most state ballots across the country. Let's swing to the polls findings when it comes to Biden's approval rating, Casey. Again, he remains underwater. Tell us.

Yeah, so this comes back to the independent issue. What's really interesting, you know, we talked about independence in particular, being unhappy with both Biden and Trump who are eager to take this third party option. Our poll found that 60% of independent voters disapprove of the job that Biden is doing. Right. So if you break down some of these numbers, you know, women rate the president a little better, giving him 47% approval versus 52% disapprove. Men are more critical. only 41% of men approve of Biden and 58% disapprove. Interestingly, you know, go back to white and Hispanic vote supporting Trump, white and Hispanic voters are almost equal on this issue with about 58% disapproval of Biden and about 40% approval. Now, black voters, as has traditionally been the case, are much more in favor of the Democratic candidate, you know, about 75% approved compared to 20% who disapproved. But when you look at Trump's numbers with black voters, I mean, he gets dominated handily by Biden. But for Republicans historically, Trump does pretty well.

So he doesn't have to win a majority of black voters to win the White House. I mean, if he did that, the race would be over immediately. But he only has to chip away at Biden's sizable lead in the black voter candidate to category to win some of these important states. So he doesn't have to totally take it. He just has to improve. You know, we can talk about why the approval is so low. low. Of course, inflation seems to be back on the rise. Prices have risen about 18% since Biden took office. We have multiple overseas conflicts that seem unsettled. And it seems like maybe we haven't

helped at all. If Israel and Gaza, you have Ukraine, Russia, you have what's going on in the straits with international trade and the supply chains being disrupted. So with the Houthi rebels. So there's a lot of things overseas that are Hardy Biden. And at home, there's inflation. And I think there's just a general lack of confidence in his mental and cognitive ability as he's facing these complex challenges. Casey, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with all of our stories on the Center Square voter's voice poll at thecentersquare.com.