NBC News chose the slowest news day of the week – Sunday – to release new presidential poll numbers to the public. And it’s no wonder. The latest national survey shows Joe Biden dropping like a lead balloon behind GOP front-runner Donald J. Trump. These are still early days, and it’s only one poll, but the numbers have the leftist media reeling.
A Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies survey of 1,000 registered voters, sponsored by NBC News, seems to be scaring the bejesus out of the left. “Wow,” was NBC News’ Kristen Welker’s reaction on Meet the Press after learning about Trump’s five-point lead (47% – 42%). “[S]ome truly stunning numbers,” Welker added in disbelief. Incredibly, this bad news for the current president was reported in the leftist digital site HuffPost, among others.
Things get even worse when one digs into the issue cross tabs:
- Southern border: Trump leads Biden by 35 points (57% – 22%)
- Fitness for the office: Trump leads Biden by 23 points (46% – 23%)
- On the economy: Trump leads Biden by 22 points (55% – 33%)
- Crime and violence: Trump leads Biden by 21 points (50% – 29%)
Reacting to the startling poll numbers, NBC National Political Correspondent Steve Kornacki noted, “[T]his is the biggest lead NBC has ever had in 16 polls for Donald Trump over Joe Biden.”
The only outlier where Biden pulled ahead of Trump was question 31: [I]f Donald Trump is found guilty and convicted this year of a felony, in the election for president, with (ROTATE) Donald Trump as the Republican candidate and Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, for whom would you vote? The numbers flipped, showing Biden at 45% to Trump’s 43%.
Scary Swing State Poll Numbers
Some pollsters don’t put much stock in national polls, so it’s worth looking at state surveys. It’s in the all-important swing states where things get very dicey for the Biden campaign. There are simply too many surveys that show Trump is pulling away from the president to discount.
Polling aggregators FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics indicate the former president is up by four points in Arizona, five in North Carolina, eight in Georgia, five in Michigan, and seven in Nevada. Only Pennsylvania and Wisconsin appear to be in play. Both swing states are recording a virtual dead heat in head-to-head matchups of the two presidents.
Republican pollster Bill McInturff and his Democratic counterpart Jeff Horwitt jointly conducted the survey. Horwitt told NBC that the poll numbers illustrate “a presidency in peril.” He compared the numbers to 2020 and indicated Biden’s “erosion” in popularity was “most concerning.” Meanwhile, McInturff chimed in, “It is hard to imagine a more difficult set of numbers [for Biden] before a re-election.”
It’s a stretch to imagine the Democratic Party changing horses this far into the race, so perhaps it is banking on Trump’s legal troubles intervening before Election Day. However, the former president is making headway in several court matters, including Fani Willis’ case in Georgia and special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution in DC.
On Sunday (Feb. 4), while speaking at a campaign event in Nevada, Biden tried the age-old fear tactic, stating that Americans would be “living a nightmare” should Trump win re-election, according to Fox News. Then he went on to posit, “We have to keep the White House. We must keep the Senate,” adding that then “we can say we saved American democracy.” But the truly frightening thing for the Democrats appears to be that absent a felony conviction, Donald Trump is headed into the promised land of an insurmountable lead.
