Joseph R. Biden Jr has taken a commanding lead over President Trump in the 2020 race, building a wide advantage among women and non-white voters and making deep inroads with some traditionally Republican-leaning groups that have shifted away from Trump following his ineffective response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new national poll of registered voters by The New York Times and Siena College.

Biden is currently ahead of Trump by 14 percentage points, garnering 50 per cent of the vote compared with 36 per cent for Trump. That is among the most dismal showings of Trump’s presidency, and a sign that he is the clear underdog right now in his fight for a second term.

Trump has been an unpopular President for virtually his entire time in office. He has made few efforts since his election in 2016 to broaden his support beyond the Right-wing base that vaulted him into office with only 46 per cent of the popular vote and a modest victory in the Electoral College.

But among a striking cross-section of voters, the distaste for Trump has deepened as his administration failed to stop a deadly disease that crippled the economy and then as he responded to a wave of racial-justice protests with angry bluster and militaristic threats. The dominant picture that emerges from the poll is of a country ready to reject a President whom a strong majority of voters regard as failing the greatest tests confronting his administration.

Biden leads Trump by enormous margins with black and Hispanic voters, and women and young people appear on track to choose Biden by an even wider margin than they favoured Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016. But the former Vice-President has also drawn even with Trump among male voters, whites and people in middle age and older — groups that have typically been the backbones of Republican electoral success, including Trump’s in 2016.

Arlene Myles, 75, of Denver, said she had been a Republican for nearly six decades before switching her registration to independent earlier this year during Trump’s impeachment trial. Myles said that when Trump was first elected, she had resolved to “give him a chance”, but had since concluded that he and his party were irredeemable.

“I was one of those people who stuck by Nixon until he was waving goodbye,” Myles said. “I thought I was a good Republican and thought they had my values, but they have gone down the tubes these last few years.”

President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House on June 24, 2020 (AP photo)

Myles said she planned to vote for Biden, expressing only one misgiving: “I wish he was younger,” she said.

Most stark may be Biden’s towering advantage among white women with college degrees, who support him over Trump by 39 percentage points. In 2016, exit polls found that group preferred Hillary Clinton to Trump by just 7 percentage points. The poll also found that Biden has narrowed Trump’s advantage with less-educated white voters.

The exodus of white voters from the Republican party has been especially pronounced among younger voters, an ominous trend for a party that as already heavily reliant on older Americans. Fifty-two per cent of whites under 45 said they supported Biden while only 30 per cent said they supported Trump.

And their opposition is intense: More than twice as many younger whites viewed the President very unfavourably than very favourably.

Tom Diamond, 31, a Republican in Fort Worth, Texas, said he planned to vote for Trump but would do so with real misgivings. He called the President a “poor leader” who had mishandled the pandemic and said Biden seemed “like a guy you can trust”. But Trump held views closer to his own on the economy and health care.

“Part of you just feels icky voting for him,” Diamond said. “But definitely from a policy perspective, that’s where my vote’s going to go.”

Some unease towards Trump stems from voters’ racial attitudes. According to the poll, white voters under 45 are overwhelmingly supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement, while older whites are more tepid in their views towards racial activism.

New York Times News Service