Only 13pc of voters up for grabs for Donald Trump and Joe Biden
Half of voters in a recent poll say there is no chance they will support Trump, and 37 per cent say they will never back Biden.
Meet an exclusive club of US presidential voters: politically moderate, lukewarm on both candidates, frustrated by the system and not sure exactly how, if or for whom they will cast a ballot.
The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has revealed that just 13 per cent of voters say their vote is up for grabs in the November election. That is compared with 50 per cent who say there is no chance they will support Donald Trump and 37 per cent who say there is no chance they will support presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden.
The up-for-grabs or persuadable voters are people who said that they don’t support either Mr Trump or Mr Biden or that they back one candidate but still might vote for the other. The small size of that group underscores the divisions in US politics. Still, they could have an outsized impact on the results. For Mr Trump, who had 40 per cent of support from all registered voters in the poll to Mr Biden’s 51 per cent, winning them over is one pathway to close the gap.
“Right now, Trump’s down 11 points. This is a group he’s got to run the table with. He’s got to win all of them,” said Democrat pollster Jeff Horwitt, who worked on the survey with Republican Bill McInturff.
Bill Davis, 65, from Texas, said he voted for a third-party candidate in 2016 due to his frustration with both candidates. Right now, he says he expects to back Mr Biden, but it is still possible that could change.
“He hasn’t done anything stupid yet,” he said. “He’s still got a few months to go.”
Currently, 17 per cent of the persuadable voters say they prefer Mr Trump, 14 per cent say Mr Biden and 53 per cent say neither. They consider themselves slightly more Republican than Democratic or independent and would prefer a GOP-majority congress to a Democrat-led one. But in 2016, 48 per cent of them didn’t vote or voted third-party, which raises questions about how many will show up for either candidate.
“This a Republican-leaning group, but given where he is and given where they are there’s not nearly enough and there’s not a lot of confidence there that they’re going to vote,” Mr Horwitt said.
There are more men than women in this group and it trends younger, with 42 per cent between the ages of 18 and 34. In the poll, they identified themselves as politically moderate and gave Mr Trump a mixed review on the issues, with the economy his greatest strength, as it is with all voters.
Mr McInturff described them as “male, working class, younger, disenfranchised and disenchanted with our political system.”
“They’re sort of these radical free agents,” he said.
On the economy, 66 per cent of this group approve of Mr Trump’s performance, compared with 24 per cent that disapprove. But 69 per cent disapprove of his handling of the coronavirus, compared with 24 per cent who approve. And on race relations, 75 per cent disapprove of his efforts, compared with 20 per cent who approve.
Survey respondents reflected those mixed feelings — as well as some ambivalence — about both candidates.
Mr Davis said he appreciated some of Mr Trump’s moves, including his efforts on immigration, saying that he is “paying attention to a lot of people who have just felt ignored over the last 20 years, people who have real concerns about the way immigration is run.”
He said he was frustrated with the President’s handling of the coronavirus and his rhetoric.
Still, he left the door cracked for Mr Trump, saying: “He could turn it around. If he behaved like a rational adult for the next three months and was able to pull a couple of rabbits out of his hat as related to the pandemic”.
He said one key factor for him will be who Mr Biden chooses as his running mate: “I really, really liked John McCain. But when he selected (Sarah) Palin, I would not vote for him.”
The Journal/NBC News poll surveyed 900 registered voters July 9-12. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.27 percentage points.
The Wall Street Journal
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