Trump tanks in polls, 70 pc say country spiralling out of control

Washington

A string of seven polls this month is showing that US President Donald Trump's rival Joe Biden widening his lead in head-to-head matchups with 16 weeks left until election day, the country's coronavirus response is in utter disarray and seven in 10 Americans saying things are spiralling out of control.

A RealClearPolitics average of seven polls between June 27 and July 14 puts Biden nearly nine points ahead. These polls come amid a pandemic that has killed more than 137,000 people in the US while cases continue to surge in states which have ignored public health guidelines in the absence of clear messaging from the White House.

Predictive models touted by the US government point to nearly 175,000 fatalities by the end of August and Americans broadly disagree with Trump on how to deal with the catastrophe.

There's a lot of buzz about the crevices within these Trump-Biden polls, especially the enthusiasm factor. Clearly, Biden voters are not the most enthusiastic bloc but the same set of polls also shows Trump voters don't dislike Biden as much as Biden voters dislike Trump.

An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll shows 50 per cent of all registered voters "strongly" disapprove of Trump and 13 per cent of voters are "up for grabs". Fifty per cent say there is no chance at all they will vote for Trump and 52 per cent say they're "very uncomfortable" about the Trump candidacy for a second term.

Much of the analysis is around the intersection of those two trends: What happens if all of the "up for grabs" voters lean Trump despite the 50 per cent who strongly disapprove? Will they even vote? If they do, would that be enough to counter the negative effect of the hardening anti-Trump sentiment?

According to a FiveThirtyEight commentary, the public's stronger dislike of Trump is likely to be the more "consequential" enthusiasm gap in 2020.

The endless cocktail of bad news has injected familiar turmoil into Trump's 2020 campaign, resulting in headline grabbing staff churned this week while Trump has been struggling to make his case for four more years in office.

The results of a Quinnipiac poll released midweek are the most bruising for the US President. Biden has opened his biggest lead yet -- 15 points -- in the race for the White House. Registered voters backed Biden over Trump 52-37 per cent.

"There is no upside, no silver lining, no encouraging trend hidden somewhere in this survey for the President," Quinnipiac University's Tim Malloy said in the results summary.

The NBC News-WSJ poll shows that 72 per cent of American voters believe that the country is headed on the wrong track -- a 16-point jump on this same question since March.

The poll shows Biden ahead of Trump by 11 points among registered voters, 51 per cent to 40 per cent.

Of the six polls conducted in July alone, an Economist-YouGov poll is among the most detailed, with 114 questions analysed by age group, region and education levels. Here too, Biden is currently leading Trump by nine points.

In the torrent of terrible poll numbers, one trend holds firm for the Trump campaign: Voters who support Donald Trump are way more gung-ho about their candidate than the Biden camp.

The NBC-WSJ poll shows 10 per cent of all voters are negative on both Trump and Biden, but Biden is leading among these voters.