New polling data showing Joe Biden increasingly underwater with his base has been released just as a Democratic congressman announced a primary challenge against the president.
Rep. Dean Phillips’ (D-Minn.) entry into the race comes as a large plurality of Democratic voters say they don’t want Biden to run again.
“According to a poll conducted online from October 16 to October 23 by HarrisX/The Messenger, 57 percent of Democrats think Biden should run again, while 43 percent do not,” Newsweek reported on Friday.
“Biden is, however, still ahead of his fellow Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson by a wide margin. Out of the 3,029 registered voters who were questioned, Biden received 35 percent of their support, while Williamson received just 9 percent,” the outlet noted further.
Pitted against GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, Biden was behind with 35 percent of the vote compared to the former president’s 38 percent. Meanwhile, independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Prof. Cornel West got 13 percent and 2 percent, respectively, according to the polling data.
Newsweek added the new wrinkle:
Biden is now up against a new challenger Phillips, who served Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District since 2019, after he formally launched his campaign on Friday morning. Phillips told CBS News that after looking at the polls, he is alarmed at the chance that Trump could beat Biden if the election were between the two of them.
“I will not sit still and not be quiet in the face of numbers that are so clearly saying that we’re going to be facing an emergency next November,” Phillips said.
“My grave concern is I just don’t think President Biden will beat Donald Trump next November,” the representative added.
“I’m just so frustrated—I’m growing appalled—by the silence from people whose job it is to be loud,” he said.
A Gallup poll conducted between October 2 and October 23 found that Biden’s approval rating among voters in his party has fallen 11 percentage points in the past month to 75 percent, contributing to an overall approval rating of an anemic 37 percent.
Meanwhile, longtime Democrat strategist James Carville is being attacked by his own party for stating what he believes should be plain for all Democrats to see.
He has revealed that several Democrats have asked him to stop talking about the president’s chances of being elected again as Phillips stepped up to challenge the president in the Democrat primary, The Atlantic reported.
The strategist said that Democrats are not disagreeing with him, but they want him to stop talking about the president having a tough time being elected again.
“Nobody is saying, ‘James, you’re wrong,’” the strategist said. “They’re saying, ‘James, you can’t say that.’”
“I’m looking at polling data, and I’m looking at all of it. The president’s numbers are just not good—and they’re not getting any better,” he said.
“I talk to a lot of people who do a lot of congressional-level polling and state polling, and they’re all saying the same thing. There’s not an outlier; there’s not another opinion… The question is, has the country made up its mind?” he said.
“The most under-covered story in contemporary American politics is that black turnout has been miserable everywhere since 2020,” he added.
His remarks come as another new poll showed that just 39 percent of voters in four key swing states — Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina — have confidence in Biden’s ability to handle the economy, RealClearPolitics reported.
Of the 39 percent that had a favorable opinion of the president’s handling of the economy, a mere 9 percent said they give him a “strong approval.”
Steve Cortes, the chairman and founder of the League of American Workers, said in a column posted to the site that the reason 77 percent of the voters surveyed said that the nation is on the wrong track is because of the economy.
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