President Joe Biden leads former President Donald Trump among registered voters, new polling shows, thanks to the growing gender gap of support between the incumbent and his predecessor.
A new Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday found Biden with a 6-point lead over Trump in a hypothetical general election matchup, 50% to 44%. This is a significant shift from the last poll in December 2023, when the survey found a head-to-head contest between Biden and Trump was “too close to call” at 47% to 46%, respectively.
The new poll noted an increase in Biden’s support from female voters. Up from 53% in December, 58% of women said they support the president.
“The gender demographic tells a story to keep an eye on,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in the polling results report. “Propelled by female voters in just the past few weeks, the head-to-head tie with Trump morphs into a modest lead for Biden.”
The shift in female support for Biden comes just days after former President Donald Trump was ordered to pay former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in punitive and compensatory damages for his denial of her claims that he raped her in New York in the 1990s. He was found liable for defamation and sexual assault of Carroll in a similar trial in May 2023.
Biden’s support among independents has grown since December 2023, as well. The poll found 52% of independents would vote for Biden in a matchup this November, a 6-point increase from the end of last year.
Poll analysts say the numbers continue to solidify that the 2024 election will be a 2020 rematch between Biden and Trump, but the former president’s primary competitor, Nikki Haley, is not backing down.
While Biden beat Trump in a head-to-head race, the poll found Haley leading Biden, 47% to 42%, in a two-person contest between the former ambassador to the United Nations and the president.
“In a head-to-head matchup against Biden, Haley outperforms Trump, thanks to independents,” Malloy said.
Haley’s campaign pointed out that she sees “tremendous support” among independent voters, noting she beats Biden by 16 points with that voting bloc while Trump loses to Biden by 12 points. The former ambassador’s campaign suggested Democrats are afraid of a matchup between Biden and Haley.
“The Democrats are salivating at the idea of running against Trump again and they’re terrified of running against Nikki Haley,” Haley national spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement. “Trump lost in 2018, 2020, and 2022, and Democrats know he’ll be a drag on the entire Republican Party in 2024. With Nikki on the ticket, Republicans will win up and down the ballot from the White House to the Senate to statehouses across the country.”
However, Malloy noted that Haley’s numbers considerably slipped when third-party candidates were added to her and Biden’s hypothetical race. In a five-person race including Green Party and independent candidates, Biden received 36%, Haley received 29%, independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. received 21%, independent Cornel West received 3%, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein received 2%.
Though unlikely, if Haley were to appear on the 2024 general election ballot opposite Biden, her strong support among independents may falter with a third-party candidate thrown into the mix, impacting her lead over the president.
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The poll comes ahead of South Carolina’s Democratic primary this weekend, the first official contest in the Democrats’ presidential nominating cycle. Republicans will vote for their candidate next in Nevada, where Haley will appear on the primary ballot but not participate in the caucuses. Trump will not be on the primary ballot but will sweep the state’s delegates for participating in the caucuses.
Quinnipiac’s national poll consisted of 1,650 self-identified registered voters polled from Thursday to Monday with a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.
