Trump's attack on Biden's mental fitness isn't landing with voters, new poll finds
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • 5 years ago • 21 commentsBy: Griffin Connolly (The Independent)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
New poll finds Trump scores worse than Biden with public on mental fitness
- Griffin Connolly Washington
- Sunday 19 July 2020 22:39
( Reuters )
The Trump campaign's apparent strategy to paint Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden as senile and incompetent does not appear to be catching on with voters, a new Fox News poll has found.
Forty-seven per cent of the 1,104 registered voters surveyed for the poll released on Sunday said they believe Mr Biden has "the mental soundness to serve effectively as president," while 39 per cent said they believe he does not.
The president, in fact, scored worse. Just 43 per cent of those surveyed said Donald Trump is mentally sound enough to serve effectively, while more than half, 51 per cent, said he is not.
Pollsters from Fox News released the survey, which has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points and was conducted via live phone interview from 12-15 July, as the president and his campaign surrogates have escalated their attacks against Mr Biden's mental fitness.
Mr Biden led Mr Trump 49 per cent to 41 per cent when voters were asked who they would vote for if the presidential election were today.
Mr Biden, who for decades has been well-known for his verbal gaffes, would be the oldest person to take the presidential oath of office. Mr Trump, who was 70 when he swore the presidential oath in 2017, currently holds that distinction.
The survey's results on the two candidates' mental fitness broke down mostly along party lines, with most Republicans tending to say Mr Trump was mentally fit for office while Mr Biden was not, and Democrats saying the opposite.
Forty-one per cent of Independents said Mr Biden has the soundness of mind to serve, compared to 34 per cent who said he does not. Twenty-five per cent said they did not know.
Mr Trump's figures among Independent voters on his mental soundness are even less promising, with more than half, 54 per cent, saying he was not fit. Just 30 per cent said he does have the mental soundness, and 17 per cent said they did not know.
On other questions of mental acuity, Mr Trump scored even more poorly among the Fox News poll's respondents.
Forty-two per cent said he had the intelligence for the job, and just 40 per cent said he had the proper judgment.
The polling does not necessarily spell doom for Mr Trump on Election Day this November, however. In October 2016, just a month before he scored an electoral college victory over Hillary Clinton, just 36 per cent of respondents to a Fox News poll said Mr Trump showed the necessary judgment to be president.
Despite his own lagging support in public polling, Mr Trump has overridden the warnings of several campaign aides to push for a line of attack against Mr Biden's alleged senility, NBC Newsreported last week.
The president's allies have happily obliged.
White House communications aide Dan Scavino, who directed the 2016 Trump campaign's social media operation, has shared multiple videos from his personal account on Twitter recently of Mr Biden appearing to lose his train of thought mid-speech, mumble words, and speak without vigour.
In a contentious interview with Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace that aired on Sunday, the president stridently attacked Mr Biden's mental fitness.
"Biden can't put two sentences together. … They wheel him out. He goes up — he repeats — they ask him questions. He reads a teleprompter and then he goes back into his basement. You tell me the American people want to have that in an age where we're in trouble with other nations that are looking to do numbers on us?" Mr Trump said.
Meanwhile, the president's own former advisers have accused him of the same thing he's now accusing Mr Biden of.
Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton has said he will not vote for his former boss this November, describing the president as "not fit for office" and lacking "the competence to carry out the job."
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Anyone can see that Trump makes more mental and verbal gaffes than Biden. Some people would rather be blind though.
Biden makes gaffes (mis-speaks), Trump is either lying or truly believes some of the crap he spouts, (i.e. windmills cause cancer and stealth fighters are invisible).
Sure, he “misspoke” when he plagiarized speeches. And falsely claimed his family was killed by a drunk driver. Could happen to anyone.
of course, trumps gaffes are counted as lies, not that consistency matters to those who count Trump’s “lies”
You want to count lies?? Trump is over 20,000 since elected.
20k? Last i heard from your ilk it was over 160k.
What happened?
Your listening to the voices in your own head again...
Thank you for making my point.
Nope, that number seems to fluctuate depending on who is spouting it off and how bad the TDS happens to be coursing through their veins that day. I suspect it has something to do with how well the happy pills are tuned in at that particular time as well.
20k is about as low as i've seen it here with the top number being about 160k. This yields a Mean of 90k and a Standard Deviation of 70k
Just a little fun with math for the kids ....
Are you going to provide any links to back up your claim, or do you expect me to take your word for it???
JR knows what I’m talking about. You likely do as well if you are being honest but we don’t really expect that here do we?
Did I lose you in the 8th grade math lesson?
Amazing "pass the buck" there. YOU made the claim, therefore YOU need to support it.
So the 8th grade math is eluding you. Got it.
I realize it is tough to support claims that are outright lies, but you shouldn't make the claim then.
Once the real campaigning starts and the TV ads and the debates show Biden in his natural state, the voters will start to recoil in horror.
Once the debates begin, you will see Trump spouting lie after lie, and completely oblivious to the world around him.
Once the real campaigning starts
Trump has been campaigning hard since the day he was inaugurated, and the voters are already recoiling in horror... Trump's poll ratings are plummeting and about to go off the cliff...
Well he had to do something, the whole governing thing didn't work for him, and he ran out of relatives to hire.
Time will tell. If Biden keeps hidin ..... all bets are off.