Poll Watch
Trump's internal polls reportedly show a 'brutal' falloff among independents and a 'woman problem'
A CNN/SSRS poll released Monday morning shows former Vice President Joe Biden crushing President Trump by 14 percentage points, 55 percent to 41 percent, in a head-to-head matchup five months before the election. Those are Biden's highest marks yet and Trump's lowest back to April 2019 in CNN's tracking polls. Worse for Trump, his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, never got close to breaking 50 percent in any polling average from June 2016 to the election, Harry Enten writes at CNN, while Biden's average in live interview polls conducted over the past week is 51 percent.
"If the election were held today," The Associated Press reports, Trump would "likely lose." Trump, his political advisers, and campaign staff "have grown increasingly concerned about his re-election chances as they've watched Trump's standing take a pummeling first on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and now during a nationwide wave of protests against racial injustice," AP says. "Internal campaign surveys and public polling showed a steady erosion in support for Trump among seniors and in battleground states once believed to be leaning decisively in the president's direction."
A source briefed on Trump's internal polls tells Axios' Jonathan Swan they are "brutal," especially his significant drop-off among independents — though, another adviser added, Trump also has a "woman problem." Trump's top political advisers all huddled for the first time last week to try to right Trump's campaign ship, Swan adds. "There's a thought that we need to shift to be much more cohesive in terms of a message of healing, rebuilding, restoring, recovering ... a theme that goes with COVID and the economy and the race stuff," a senior Trump adviser tells Axios. "The messaging that works for the red-MAGA-hat base doesn't resonate with independents."
The CNN/SSRS poll was conducted June 2-5 via live interviews with 1,125 registered voters, and its margin of sampling error is ±3.6 percentage points.