Voters continue to rank President Joe Biden’s age and former President Donald Trump’s legal woes as the most compelling reasons to oppose them in November, according to new data from the latest national NBC News poll.
Respondents in the recent poll, conducted April 12-16, were asked about three potential vulnerabilities for each candidate ahead of the fall election.
For Biden, the idea that he “may not have the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a second term” was the most compelling reason for 23% of registered voters. Another 17% of registered voters said their top gripe with Biden was that “millions of immigrants have crossed our border illegally” during his presidency, and 16% chose the message about inflation’s hitting a “40-year high, making it hard for take home pay to match rising prices.” Another 15% said “all of these” were most convincing.
For Trump, 20% of registered voters said the most convincing reason to oppose him was that he’s “facing four different criminal and civil trials for alleged wrongdoing, including multiple felony charges related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election.”
Another 14% said Trump “takes credit for his Supreme Court nominees taking away a woman’s right to an abortion,” and 8% chose that he “wants to pardon those convicted of storming the Capitol on January 6th.”
But there was a significant difference among the respondents who said none of those messages were the most convincing: For Trump, 40% of registered voters chose that option, while 28% chose it for Biden.
A look inside the numbers suggests that they stem from Republicans’ being less willing to acknowledge any of Trump’s vulnerabilities than Democrats are to acknowledge Biden’s weaknesses (even as Democrats prepare in near lockstep to vote for him in November).
Seventy-two percent of Republicans chose “none” of Trump’s potential vulnerabilities, compared with 34% of independents and 8% of Democrats.
By comparison, 54% of Democrats chose “none” of Biden’s potential vulnerabilities, compared with 21% of independents and 4% of Republicans.
Put another way, just 25% of Republicans said there was a convincing reason to consider voting against Trump, compared to 42% of Democrats with Biden.
It’s indicative of how the two parties approach their nominees, said Jeff Horwitt, the Democratic pollster who conducted the NBC News poll with Republican pollster Bill McInturff.
“The two parties are suffering from two different diseases,” he said. “Where Democrats look inwards and are concerned about what they see, Republicans are more willing to look past really — from my point of view — major, major problems with their nominee.”
Still, there’s evidence those partisans see the question as a thought exercise, not one generating any meaningful difference in how they’ll cast their votes. Fully 92% of Democrats in the NBC News poll say they’d vote for Biden head-to-head against Trump, and 96% of Republicans say they’d back Trump.
Given the chance to back a third-party or independent candidate, 80% of Democrats stick with Biden, and 76% of Republicans stick with Trump.
But such messages could shade the mindset of independents, 34% of whom say they’ll back a candidate other than the two major-party nominees, as well as those voters who support candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West or Jill Stein. Voters backing those other candidates say they’re more likely to change their minds before November.
Among independents, the biggest group chose Biden’s mental and physical health as their top Biden negative (29%), while a plurality (34%) chose “none” of the negatives for Trump.
Among those supporting third-party or independent candidates, 35% pointed to Biden’s mental and physical health, and 26% chose the inflation messaging. On Trump, 26% of them chose his trials, and 25% chose the message about his taking credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, but 28% said none of the messages were convincing.
How those voters respond to those messages over the next six months may hold the key to deciding the election, Horwitt said.
“How can both these candidates appeal to those people who, right now, are turned off by both of them?” he asked. “Can you make the case that the concerns about the other candidate are so great that it’s no longer [a choice between] two evils — there’s a lesser of two evils?”
The NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters nationwide — 891 contacted via cellphone — was conducted April 12-16, and it has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
