OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Hosts of ABC’s “The View” were in disbelief this week and attempted to explain “what is going on” in light of a new Washington Post/ABC poll showing former President Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden by ten points among voters.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, co-host, echoed the Washington Post’s description of the poll as an “outlier,” and attempted to explain why she was “skeptical of polls.”
“They were wrong in 2016. They were wrong in 2020, but you can take information on aggregate when a lot of polls show the same thing over a period of time in different voters. [It’s a] one-off that is so far out of step with other polling … an anomaly in the poll,” Griffin said.
She went on to say that she “trusted” her parent company, ABC’s pollsters, whom she described as “phenomenal.”
Griffin then conceded that Biden does have a “reelection problem” and “Democrats need to wake up to it, whether they want to hear it or not.”
She dug into the numbers expressing surprise that Trump was “doing significantly better than 2020” with “black voters and Hispanic voters.”
“One area where Democrats have been losing in the Trump era is working-class voters. I think in many ways they are seen as too elitist for people who don’t have college educations, and Donald Trump could get those voters,” the former Trump White House communications director said, previewing Biden’s trip to Michigan on Tuesday to walk the picket line and win over striking United Auto Workers union members.
“I don’t want Donald Trump to be president, but Democrats need to wake up,” Griffin concluded.
Sonny Hostin, another co-host, commented that she wanted to wait and see how the polling looked after the first trial.
Ana Navarro, the show’s co-host, then joked that she thought ABC pollsters were high.
“I don’t know what happened with this ABC poll. I don’t know if the people asking the questions were high or the people answering the questions were high,” Navarro joked. “But somebody has got to have been on some edibles or something else because this poll is just off the charts.”
“I have a legal note,” Hostin followed up on Navarro’s comments with clarification from show producers while pressing her finger to her in-ear receiver. “Nobody at ABC that was conducting the poll was high.”
Hostin added, “I’m just doing what was told.”
After chaos ensued, co-host Whoopi Goldberg quickly cut to a commercial.
WATCH:
The poll mentioned by the hosts has sent Democrats and members of the mainstream media into panic mode.
In a hypothetical November 2024 matchup, Trump has 51% support, while Biden has 42% – a numerical increase of 3 points for Trump and a decrease of 2 points for Biden from an ABC/Post poll in February, both of which are statistically insignificant.
Biden’s job approval rating is 19 points lower than it should be, and his ratings for handling the economy and immigration are at career lows.
A record number of Americans believe his presidency has made them worse off, three-quarters believe he is too old for another term, and Donald Trump appears to be doing better in retrospect – all of which pose serious challenges for Biden in his reelection campaign.
In the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 44% of Americans say they’ve gotten worse off financially under Biden’s presidency, the highest figure for any president in ABC/Post polls since 1986. Only 37% approve of his job performance, while 56% disapprove. 30% approve of Biden’s economic performance.
Biden’s approval rating for handling immigration at the US-Mexico border is even lower, at 23%. In terms of sentiment intensity, 20% strongly approve of his overall work, while 45% strongly disapprove.
And the 74% who believe he is too old for a second term has increased by 6 percentage points since May.
Trump, for one, has matured in retrospect.
When he reluctantly left office in January 2021, 38% approved of his performance as president, which is nearly identical to Biden’s rating now. Looking back, however, 48% approve of Trump’s performance while in office, matching his peak as president.
Almost as many people, 49%, now oppose him, down from 60% when he left the White House.
A comparison to Biden could be a factor.
Among the 56% of Americans who disapprove of Biden’s performance in office, 75% say they approve of Trump in retrospect.
