Poll: Biden maintains 10-point national lead over Trump

Caitlin Oprysko
·2 min read

Former Vice President Joe Biden maintains a 10-point lead over President Donald Trump less than three months from November’s general election, a poll out Tuesday shows.

Biden leads the president 51 percent to 41 percent among registered voters nationwide, according to the Monmouth University survey, a slight tightening of the race since late June, with Biden ticking down a percentage point and Trump rising 2 points.

The new poll was released shortly before Biden announced the selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate.

The Monmouth survey found that 4 percent of those polled are still undecided in their support, while 2 percent back Libertarian Jo Jorgensen and 1 percent back the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins.

While the new poll indicates that Trump’s summer slump may be reversing course, it still gives Biden a sizable national lead heading into the presidential nominating conventions later this month. Democrats will hold their virtual convention next week, with Republicans scheduled to gather remotely the week after. Presidential candidates have historically seen bumps in their poll numbers after their party's nominating convention, but it's unclear whether this year's online events will produce a similar uptick.

There are other signs of stabilization in the race, which has seemingly tipped in Biden's favor thanks in large part to voters' dissatisfaction with Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Fully half of voters surveyed still say they are “not at all likely” to support Trump, unchanged from June, compared with 40 percent who say the same of Biden. And Biden holds a slight edge among those polled who said they are certain to vote for him, with 39 percent saying so compared with 35 percent for Trump, also roughly the same as in late June.

The number of respondents who said they hold unfavorable views of Biden rose 3 points since June, while the number of those polled who held similarly unfavorable views of the president fell by a point. The number of respondents with favorable views of the president climbed 2 points, to 40 percent, but still remained underwater on the question, with 54 percent of those polled responding that they hold unfavorable views of the president.

The Monmouth University poll was conducted by phone from Aug. 6 to 10 among 868 adults in the United States, with results based on 785 registered voters. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.