The question was, “If a crisis occurred that put the country at great risk, who would you want in the Oval Office to handle it: Donald Trump or Joe Biden?”
This is the kind of question that Trump has been heavily criticized for in his last two presidential elections. But not now. In fact, suddenly, assets For Trump.
The survey found that 51% of registered voters support Trump’s handling of the crisis, while 43% support Biden.
Trump currently holds an 8-point lead, but a survey released by the same pollster in 2020 showed Biden leading by 10 to 17 points on crisis response. The same was true in the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton held a double-digit lead. That’s a reversal of about 20 points or more. (The wording of the question is slightly different, but the content is the same.)
The Quinnipiac poll is one of the best polls of Trump in recent weeks — in fact, it’s the best Quinnipiac poll of the season — but it’s not the only one pointing in this direction.
In an April NBC News poll, voters favored Trump’s “ability to handle a crisis” by 4 points, 46-42, after leading Biden by 9 points and Clinton by 1 point on the same question in April 2020. 18 Points April 2016.
Other polls from 2016 showed Clinton with similar leads of 16 to 20 points.
In fact, it seemed to be one of Trump’s biggest weaknesses, especially in that election: A Gallup poll conducted after the final presidential debate compared the candidates on seven issues, with Clinton’s 25-point lead on handling of “international crises” being the largest of the seven issues (she won on every one).
So why is Trump suddenly leading the charge on these questions?
A lot of this surely has to do with a lack of confidence in Biden’s ability to run the country, especially given the major concerns about his age, which puts him in a much worse position on those issues than he was four years ago.
But voters view President Trump more favorably now, with or without Biden, than they did during his presidency. This is often referred to by Trump critics as “Trump amnesia.” After all, there was the COVID-19 crisis during the Trump administration, and Americans rated Trump’s performance quite poorly. That is not the case today.
The question remains: how much will this hurt Biden’s standing and how much will it boost Trump’s standing? Ultimately, it’s a binary choice.
But the problem for Biden is the same either way: In both 2016 and 2020, Trump was clearly seen as the riskier candidate in the event of a disaster, but that’s no longer the case.
If Biden has any solace ahead of Thursday night’s debate, it’s the Gallup numbers. Voters saw Trump and Clinton on the debate stage, but the hypothetical crisis was Trump’s biggest weakness. Biden’s priority in Thursday night’s debate will be reminding people why he felt the way he did, and why he continued to be concerned about Trump in a crisis during the real crisis of 2020.
