Aug 16, 2020 - Politics & Policy

Poll: 58% of Biden voters say vote is more "against" Trump than "for" Biden

Biden and trump split screen.

Photos: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images; JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

58% of registered voters who support Joe Biden in the 2020 election say their vote is more in opposition to President Trump than in support of Biden, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll out Sunday.

Why it matters: The Trump campaign has long insisted that the president's supporters are far more enthusiastic than Biden's, and that this will manifest in higher turnout during the election. Nearly three-quarters of Trump's supporters say their vote is more in support of the president than against Biden.

Yes, but: Biden overall maintains an 8-point lead in FiveThirtyEight's average of national polls, including a 50%-41% lead in the WSJ/NBC News poll.

By the numbers: 39% of respondents said they had positive views of Joe Biden's new running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, while 35% said they viewed her negatively. Her net approval of +4 is higher than that of Vice President Mike Pence (-5), Biden (-6) and Trump (-12).

  • The poll indicates Harris is more popular among women and voters of color. 45% of both groups said they view the senator positively, while men and white voters were less likely to have positive views on Harris, at 32% and 36% respectively.
  • A separate ABC News/Washington Post poll out Sunday finds that 54% of Americans approves of Biden's choice of Harris as his running mate, including 25% of Republicans, while 29% of Americans disapprove.

The big picture: Trump's approval rating in the WSJ/NBC News poll increased 2 points since July to 44%. But 53% of respondents still disapprove of his performance and 58% disapprove of his handling of the pandemic.

Methodologies: The WSJ/NBC News poll was conducted Aug. 9-12 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.27% for the full sample of 900 registered voters. The ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted Aug. 12-15 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5 for a random national sample of 1,001 adults.

Go deeper ... Axios-SurveyMonkey poll: Harris boosting Biden ticket with key voters

Go deeper