One in four Democrats who were shown the footage of Joe Biden denying Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations want to see the Democratic Party pick a different nominee before the convention.
According to a Monday poll from Morning Consult, 26% of Democrats said they would like to see a new candidate replace Biden after watching a video of the former vice president denying the allegations made by Reade. Democratic voters under the age of 45 were significantly more likely to want to see Biden replaced, with 40% saying so.
Respondents to the poll were shown a 35-second clip of Biden’s denial from an interview that aired on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday. During the interview, Biden said, “No. It is not true. I’m saying unequivocally: It never, never happened. It didn’t. It never happened.”
A majority of Democrats, 61%, found Biden’s denial to be credible. Women and respondents under the age of 45 were less likely to find Biden’s denial credible. Overall, 41% of voters found Biden’s denial to be credible, while 39% did not find his denial credible.
Forty-two percent of Democrats said politicians should resign when they are hit with credible accusations of sexual assault. This shows a significant change from how Democrats responded to the same question in December 2017 during the height of the #MeToo movement. At the time, 62% of Democrats felt politicians should resign when facing credible accusations of sexual assault.
The Democratic National Convention has been postponed until August. Biden is the only candidate remaining in the race, but there have not been enough primary elections for him to secure the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination.
