Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden held onto a double-digit lead nationally over President Trump in the final NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll ahead of Election Day.
The latest poll showed Biden ahead among registered voters by 10 percentage points, 52% to Trump’s 42%. Biden held an 11-point lead two weeks ago in relatively stable national polling. When NBC first started polling registered voters, Biden was up 9 percentage points, 51% to 42%.
“This is the 11th survey we’ve done in 2020, and so little has changed,” said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who conducted this survey with Public Opinion Strategies’s Bill McInturff, a Republican.
Conducted between Oct. 29 and Oct. 31 among 1,000 registered voters, the poll carried a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.
The poll brought few surprises — since September, nearly every poll used in FiveThirtyEight’s aggregated national poll has shown Biden with a high single-digit to a double-digit lead. One Rasmussen poll showed a tie, and one poll from Spry Strategies gave Trump a 1-point lead. It’s aggregated results have Biden at 52% to Trump’s 43%.
Amid record-breaking mail-in and early voting because of the coronavirus pandemic, Biden supporters far outstripped Trump voters when it came to already casting their ballots. Of the 68% of respondents who already voted or planned to vote before Election Day, 61% were voting for Biden compared to 35% who were voting for Trump.
NBC’s poll found 52% of voters disapprove of the president, down slightly from two weeks ago when 54% disapproved. Forty-two percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of Biden.
Trump continues to poll poorly concerning the coronavirus. Only 40% of respondents approved of how the president was handling the coronavirus, as opposed to the 57% who disapproved. Nearly 70% of respondents said that the coronavirus had changed their families’ lives in a “very major” or “fairly major” way.
