President Biden is struggling to overcome doubts about his leadership inside his own party and broad dissatisfaction over the nation’s direction, leaving him trailing behind Donald J. Trump just as their general election contest is about to begin, a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College has found.

With eight months left until the November election, Biden’s 43 per cent support lags behind Trump’s 48 per cent in the national survey of registered voters.

Only one in four voters think the country is moving in the right direction. More than twice as many voters believe Biden’s policies have personally hurt them as believe his policies have helped them. A majority of voters think the economy is in poor condition. And the share of voters who strongly disapprove of Biden’s handling of his job has reached 47 per cent, higher than in Times/Siena polls at any point in his presidency.

The poll offers an array of warning signs for the president about weaknesses within the Democratic coalition, including among women, Black and Latino voters. So far, it is Trump who has better unified his party, even amid an ongoing primary contest.

Biden has marched through the early nominating states with only nominal opposition. But the poll showed that Democrats remain deeply divided about the prospect of Biden, the 81-year-old chief executive, leading the party again. About as many Democratic primary voters said Biden should not be the nominee in 2024 as said he should be — with Opposition strongest among voters younger than 45 years old.

Trump’s ability to consolidate the Republican base better than Biden has unified the base of his party shows up starkly in the current thinking of 2020 voters. Trump is winning 97 per cent of those who say they voted for him four years ago, and virtually none of his past supporters said they are casting a ballot for Biden. In contrast, Biden is winning only 83 per cent of his 2020 voters, with 10 per cent saying they now back Trump.

“It’s going to be a very tough decision — I’m seriously thinking about not voting,” said Mamta Misra, 57, a Democrat and an economics professor in Lafayette, who voted for Biden in 2020. “Trump voters are going to come out no matter what. For Democrats, it’s going to be bad. I don’t know why they’re not thinking of someone else.”

Trump’s five-point lead in the survey, which was conducted in late February, is slightly larger than in the last Times/Siena national poll of registered voters in December. Among the likely electorate, Trump currently leads by four percentage points.

In last year’s survey, Trump led by two points among registered voters and Biden led by two points among the projected likely electorate.

One of the more ominous findings for Biden in the new poll is that the historical edge Democrats have held with working-class voters of colour who did not attend college continues to erode.

Biden won 72 per cent of those voters in 2020, according to exit polling, providing him with a nearly 50-point edge over Trump. Today, the Times/Siena poll showed Biden only narrowly leading among nonwhite voters who did not graduate from college: 47 per cent to 41 per cent.

An excitement gap between the two parties shows up repeatedly in the survey: Only 23 per cent of Democratic primary voters said they were enthusiastic about Biden — half the share of Republicans who said they were about Trump. More Democrats said they were either dissatisfied or angry at Biden being the leader of the party (32 per cent) than Republicans saying the same about Trump (18 per cent).

Trump had a weak 44 per cent favourable rating; Biden fared even worse, at 38 per cent. Among the 19 per cent of voters who said they disapproved of both likely nominees — an unusually large cohort in 2024 that pollsters and political strategists sometimes call “double haters” — Biden actually led Trump, 45 per cent to 33 per cent.

New York Times News Service