Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. I'm Stephen Carol and this is Here's Why, where we take one news story and explain it in just a few minutes with our experts here at Bloomberg. The Trump Biden debate on June twenty seventh was supposed to be a warm up match before either candidate officially secured their party's nomination. Instead, it turned into a watershed moment for Joe Biden, sparking a firestorm of speculation over his ability to serve another term
as president. I don't walk as easy as I used to.
I don't speak as.
Smooth as I used to. I don't debate as well.
As I used to. Well, I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.
I don't like millions of Americas now, when you get knocked down, you get back up. Heading into the debate, Joe Biden was try railing Donald Trump slightly in the polls and in the two weeks following it. That hasn't changed dramatically. In fact, the Bloomberg News Morning Consult poll of battleground states conducted after the debate saw Biden's best showing yet, despite voters rating his TV performance poorly. So here's why Biden's woes aren't having more impact on polls
our money in politics are. Laura Davison joins us from Washington for more. First of all, what have polls told us about views of Joe Biden since the debate?
So we have several different data points that have come out. One is the Bloomberg News Morning Console poll that you referenced, and this is actually the best reading in the poll since we've started conducting it last October. This is a poll of seven different swing states. We're pulling a bunch of different issues. But one of the things we'd look at is that top horse race number. Biden is registering at forty five percent and Trump at forty seven percent.
That is outside the margin of air, but it shows a very close reading, and given that we're still four months out from the election, indicates that this is a very close race. There's several other points that we've seen, some that sort of support this race tightening and some that are divergent. There's been several national polls that have
been conducted that have shown Biden falling further behind. I'll note the difference there is that is looking nationwide, whereas the Bloomberg Pole is just looking at those battleground states that are going to be the ones that really decide the election. There's also a new poll out from ABC that is also a national poll, but shows it neck and neck for Biden and Trump Biden at forty six percent,
Trump at forty seven percent. Another thing that has come out since the debate that has also been closely watched by both Republicans and Democrats is this report from a group called the Cook Political Report, and they basically look at different states and rate them as how likely they are to be for Republicans, for Democrats, or if they're a toss up. They earlier this week re rated six different states and basically moved them all in the direction
of Trump. That's been one of the signs that's been really worrying for Democrats in particular, and is actually some Democrats who have come out and called for Biden to step down. They've cited this specifically, saying, look, the map in general is moving more in Trump's favor and we need to do something to stop the bleeding here.
Yeah, because certainly what we've been hearing from stoners and this sort of chorus or increasing chorus of Democrats talking about asking questions about Joe Biden's health. It doesn't yet seem to quite match up with what we're seeing from Poles. Is there any way that we can understand why that is?
Both can be true? Is one that the race can be tightening as well as you know that Democrats and Republicans are expressing concerns about Biden's age, health, mental acuity. In our Bloomberg poll, you know, we found that the race is tightening, but also three in ten Democrats think that Biden should bow out with the race. We ask a bunch of different questions about mental, fitness, acuity, age health,
and none of those were particularly positive for Biden. A majority of people think that he's too old to run again. But where we see that what sort of explains the difference here is just the deep partisanship in the US and that people when they're faced with a binary choice of either Trump or Biden, people really go into their camps and say, look, even if I have some concerns about my candidate, I'm still ultimately going to vote for them if that's the choice I have.
So ultimately, can we attribute then some of that support to Joe Biden to just people voting against Donald Trump.
Yes, And you know, even if you talk with the Biden campaign, they are happy to have a vote. If it's someone who is firmly, solidly enthusiastically for Biden, or if it's someone who is maybe lukewarm on Biden but very much opposed to Trump, both those votes count the same. They'll tell you.
What could shift this further in the polls. What should we be watching out for is things that might actually change some of those voters' minds.
So there's a long way from now until the election. There are certain things that could happen with either candidate. So we have seen that Trump has earned this name Teflon Trump that you know, bad things can happen. He can be convicted, you know, I'm thirty four of felon accounts. He can go out and say that are very controversial. But none of those things seem to really register for him and in some cases actually help his pole standing versus hurt him or help him in other ways such
as fundraising. Biden is a little bit more susceptible to things that are happening dragging on his polling. Anything that would be a downturn in the economy, or at least perceptions of the economy, have been a key issue for him. There's also we saw this in twenty twenty. There is a big national event of course, the pandemic is what I'm referred to here, that really changed a lot of
the dynamics of the race. Some sort of tragedy, a terrorist attack, some sort of new war, some sort of major natural disaster, all of these things could throw a wrench into the race. That's completely unexpected. But the things that we do know going forward is that people are going to be closely watching Biden's performance out in public.
He has several public appearances scheduled for this week and next, and Democrats themselves have said, look, we are waiting to see, you know, how he does when he is out unscripted in front of voters, and even Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker who's still a very trust to voice within the party, has said to hold off saying anything publicly about what you think Biden should do going forward, you know, until after voters and Democrats and everyone gets to see
a chance of how he performs this week.
So I suppose what we're learning is is the stickiness of the votes that are chabusted both to Trump and to Biden at this point in the campaign. Is that normal in presidential races or is this unusual? This factor this is the new normal.
You know, going back forty or fifty years ago, this would not have necessarily been the case. But in the modern era of US politics, going back several cycles, what we have come to expect is that each candidate is
not going to dip down but low. There's sort of a floor and a ceiling for each of them, and there's only really in these battleground states five ten, twenty thousand votes that really make a difference, and those are the key voters that both campaigns are trying to persuade, versus trying to make a big national case, because that's just not how races in the US are won.
Okay, our money and politics are Laura Davison, thank you for helping us understand and where we are in this fast moving story. For more explanations like this from our team of twenty seven hundred journalists and analysts around the world, search for Quick Take on the Bloomberg website or the Bloomberg Business app. I'm Stephen Carol. This is here's why I'll be back next week with more thanks for listening.