‘Polls in One Place’ is researched and compiled by Tom Smith and edited by me (John Ellis). Tom does the lion’s share of the work.
Here are the aggregated results of head-to-head polls by subgroup for the month of April (see the full spreadsheet for more information):
April national head-to-head polls showed Biden losing the most ground since 2020 among the following subgroups:
Black (-23)
Urban (-15)
Independent, including partisan leaners (-14)
Latino (-13)
Moderate (13)*
Age 18–29 (-12)
* Showing data for March due to insufficient data in April
These losses reflect withheld support for Biden, as Trump has gained less than what Biden has lost to voters declaring for undecided/other. In other words, they’re unhappy with Biden but have not realigned with Trump.
Greater losses among Black and Latino voters, who tend to be to the right of other groups in the Democratic base, indicate Biden may be more at risk of lasting defections from centrists rather than those on his left flank— despite all the progressive criticism regarding his actions around Israel/Palestine.
Biden has only gained relative to 2020 among the following subgroups:
Republican, excluding leaners (+3)
Rural (+3)
Age 65+ (+2)
Age 50–64 (+1)
White, Non-College (+1)
Generally, the polls suggest that Trump has largely consolidated his coalition, despite continued support for Nikki Haley, even in closed primaries. Meanwhile, Biden still has room to improve, as his losses among the Democratic base have been partially offset by holding steady among high-propensity seniors, rural voters, and white voters (which may simply be an artifact of differential non-response and weighting effects). (Source: split-ticket.org)
2. Independents and Moderates:
In aggregate, Trump is outperforming his 2020 margin among independents (including partisan leaners) by 14 points and among moderates by 13 points, which dwarfs the national swing of R+5.5. Both of these groups were critical to Biden’s victory four years ago.
Relative to 2020, Trump’s vote share is only 2 points higher among both independents and moderates, but Biden’s vote share has dropped by double digits among both groups (–12 points among independents, –10 points among moderates). It’s worth noting that under 30% of both groups are paying “a lot” of attention to the campaign to this point, far lower than most other subgroups.
Nevertheless, moderates and independents are broadly very sour on his presidency and are disproportionately more likely to swing against him, and will likely be much harder to win over than holdouts on the left.
Trump’s lead among independents (+1 to +7) and Biden’s lead among moderates (+12 to +16) has been fairly consistent over the last six months. (Source: split-ticket.org)
3. Young Voters (Aged 18-29):Age
Among voters aged 18–29, in aggregate Trump is outperforming his 2020 margin by 12 points. Relative to 2020, Biden has lost more support (–9 points) than Trump has gained (+4 points). The last time a Republican presidential candidate won at least 40% among this age group was George W. Bush in 2004.
While we don’t have reliable 2020 (or historical) estimates for voters aged 18–34 to compare against, we can be reasonably confident that Biden winning this group by just 2 points would be a seismic rightward shift given that voters aged 18-29 backed Biden by 24 points four years ago.
Similar to Black voters, some of Biden’s weakness among young voters may be attributable to the fact that many are not yet paying close attention to the race. An Economist/YouGov poll conducted last week found that only 23% of voters aged 18-29 are paying “a lot” of attention to the campaign — the lowest of any demographic group tested.
Another risk to the Biden campaign among this cohort are abstentions or third party defections, which could cost him a significant amount of support among those who backed him four years ago. The progressives among them are comparatively unlikely to vote for Trump. (Source: split-ticket.org)
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