The importance of independent voters cannot be overstated. Roughly 40% of adult Americans label themselves as independents, and they represented just under a third of those who voted in the 2022 midterm elections. Winning this important voter bloc is key to winning elections as candidates typically have to win over more than their party’s base to succeed. The party that wins over independents tends to do very well in elections where the electorate is nearly equally split.
This is why the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris poll ought to terrify the Biden camp.
The poll shows Donald Trump with a five-point lead over Joe Biden among all voters, with 16% undecided. Alone, that spells trouble for Joe Biden as it is clear that, even though he’s staying above the fray while Trump is in the middle of a bitter primary battle, voters aren’t convinced he deserves four more years. But the real trouble for Joe in this poll is that not only is Trump winning the ever-so-important independent voters, he’s winning them by a large margin.
According to the poll, Trump leads Biden among independent voters 45% to Biden’s 27% — an 18-point margin, a stunning result that Democrat insiders should certainly be concerned about, even though it arguably makes sense. Despite Biden’s best efforts to control the narrative about the economy, voters are still feeling the pain of Biden’s policies at the gas pump, the grocery store, and pretty much everywhere they spend money, and they remember that before the pandemic, the economy was solid and inflation was low. The poll backs this up.
The poll shows that a plurality of Americans say their personal financial situation has gotten worse, 61% say the economy is weak, and 62% say the country is on the wrong track. Those are hard numbers for Biden to overcome, no matter how much he tries to rebrand “Bidenomics” as a good thing — especially as economists predict a looming recession.
But even if the economy doesn’t get any worse, a whopping 68% of voters say Biden is “too old to be president” and nearly as many say he should not seek a second term. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement or an incentive to get out the vote in 2024.
Related: The Big Lie Dems Are Pushing to Protect Biden
So what are Democrats to do? There have been whispers that Biden may not end up as the nominee, but who are Democrats left with? Kamala Harris? The Harvard CAPS/Harris poll has Trump beating her by an even larger margin than he is beating Joe Biden. Trust me, Democrats won’t want to gamble the 2024 election on Kamala Harris.
The poll also found Trump to be the runaway frontrunner for the GOP nomination, with a 40-point lead over his nearest challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.). I should note that the Harvard poll does stand in contrast to Trump’s internal poll from Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research, which found Biden leading Trump 47% to 43% and showed Trump struggling to win the support of independent voters while Ron DeSantis performed better with independents against Biden.
