In a development that should come as a surprise to no one who has been conscious and not living in a cave in Tajikistan for the last year, a Pew Research poll released Wednesday reveals that 62 percent of self-identified Biden voters don't want either Joe Biden or Donald Trump on the presidential ballot in November. It's no shock that they don't favor Trump, but 62 percent wanting old Joe to pack it in has to be making some cold sweat pop out on the faces of Democrat strategists.
A Pew Research report found 62 percent of Biden supporters said they’d swap out both candidates at the top of the ticket, compared to just 35 percent of Trump supporters who said the same.
On the flip side, 27 percent of Trump voters and just 4 percent of Biden voters say they’d keep both candidates. About a third of each candidate’s backers say they’d keep just their candidate and replace the other.
Now let's weigh that information for a moment. Twenty-seven percent of Trump voters said they'd keep both candidates? Only 27 percent? Trump is a national figure of mixed blessings, to be sure, but it's baffling that only 27 percent of (presumably) Republicans would want to keep old Joe Biden on the ticket; the guy has been, of late, the mumbling, shambling, befuddled gift that keeps on giving. Frankly, it seems that Republicans would be willing to bend any effort to make sure that Joe Biden stays on the ballot right to the end.
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Both Biden and Trump have secured the delegates they need to become their parties’ presumptive presidential nominees in the fall, but the Pew Research figures are another signal of voter frustration about the idea of a 2024 Biden-Trump rematch. They also come as Biden continues to see protest votes in his party primaries from Democrats upset with the administration’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza — and concerns that young people are souring on his party.
There's a bit of interpretation that needs to be done here.
Yes, these numbers are likely a sign of voter frustration; that much is certain. But the protest votes that are vexing the Biden campaign? Let's be honest: These aren't "...from Democrats upset with the administration's handling of Israel's war in Gaza." That's the purest weasel wording. Add to that the "...concerns that young people are souring on his party," aside from the subset of younger voters that are defecting to Republicans, and you have left the young skulls full of mush who are upset, not with Biden's "handling of Israel's war," but with even the tepid, timid level support for Israel that the Biden White House has shown.
This fifth column in American universities - the ones shouting "Death to Israel" and tangling with cops on the campuses - are the young people that the Biden administration appears to be worried about just now, along with the Muslim vote in some of those swing states.
However, this Pew Research poll, we should remember, is just a curiosity at this point in the campaign. It will probably have some members of the Biden campaign worried--but we are still a long, long way from November.
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