It is almost impossible for President Joe Biden to win the 2024 election without a majority of independent voters, and now he has lost them, perhaps irrevocably.
That’s the result of an exclusive DailyMail.com poll of politically unaligned voters who watched the first presidential debate on Thursday night.
But this poll of independent-minded Americans also contained a hidden ray of hope for Democrats, disheartened by the surprisingly weak performance of their front-runner.
Because if President Biden were to drop out of the race – as prominent Democrats and influential left-wing media commentators urge him to do – and allow his party to unite around an alternative candidate, there remains a chance to defeat Trump in an election. general.
President Biden’s disastrous debate performance may have irreparably damaged his support among independent voters, according to a DailyMail.com poll
Make no mistake, as previous DailyMail.com polls have shown, voters have discouraging opinions of the aging president.
Before the debate, 48 percent of independent voters said they had an unfavorable opinion of Biden (41 percent said the same of Trump).
But Biden’s faltering performance in the debate, which failed to meet even the lowest expectations, cemented the perception that he is too old for the job.
“I was worried about him,” Miguel, a 23-year-old Hispanic voter from Missouri, who considers himself neither a Republican nor a Democrat, told the Mail.
Miguel was not alone.
“Sad,” “scared,” “confused,” “worried” and “uneasy” were the most common reactions among these voters to Biden’s performance in the debate. While these Americans expressed sympathy for the 81-year-old grandfather, they do not believe he should be in the race.
Fifty-five percent of independents said Biden “should no longer be the Democratic nominee.”
It is true that then-Senator Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election and defeated Republican John McCain without winning the independent vote, but Obama benefited from a historic turnout among black voters.
Biden will not enjoy the same level of minority support.
The desire for Biden to drop out of the race was shared by 49 percent of black independents and 57 percent of Hispanic independents.
Surprisingly, four in ten independents who voted for Biden in 2020 agreed that the party should move forward without him.
Maybe they’re onto something.
Even though many analysts and experts felt that Trump won Thursday’s debate with energy and vigor, the DailyMail.com poll found that he did not win over a significant percentage of new voters.
Hidden in this poll is a ray of hope for left-leaning Americans terrified by the prospect of another Trump presidency.
The Mail poll suggests Trump failed to convince a significant percentage of new voters, despite winning that night.
Before the debate, 48 percent of independents had a favorable opinion of Trump. After the showdown, that metric only rose a few percentage points to 51 percent, a figure statistically insignificant within the poll’s margin of error, even though six in 10 voters believed Trump had had “the best performance in the debate”.
Also, in terms of how Trump was perceived, it was a mixed bag.
He was considered the physically strongest, the most presidential, and the most mentally astute, but also the most condescending, annoying, and rude (Biden was considered the most boring).
Trump won because Biden narrowly lost. The former real estate mogul did not run again. Trump remains the most unpopular major-party politician in the country, behind Biden.
The clear conclusion from these results is that there is an opportunity for the Democrats, if they manage to change their candidate.
One in eight independent voters in our survey said they plan to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in November. While the Democratic establishment is extremely unlikely to support him, there is a clear desire among independents to hear what he has to say.
Fifty-five percent of independents believe RFK Jr should have had a spot on the CNN debate stage. That includes nearly six in 10 people who backed Biden in 2020.
More than half of independent voters believe RFK Jr. should have been included in the CNN debate
Vice President Kamala Harris has frequently been mentioned as a possible successor to Biden, however she has struggled due to poor poll results among the American electorate.
And what about the other Democrats so often mentioned as possible Biden replacements?
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are not well known to the American public, making polls about their electoral prospects are not reliable. But their relative anonymity could prove to be an advantage.
They would present themselves to voters as a blank slate, without the tremendous background of better-known politicians, such as Vice President Kamala Harris.
Previous polls have demonstrated one thing perfectly: Harris is unlikely to do much better than Biden against Trump.
She was recently named in a Mail poll of all voters in September 2023 as the least popular vice president in history.
The most commonly used words to describe her were “incompetent” and “idiot.”
A quarter of Democrats, one in four Black voters and a majority of 18- to 29-year-olds said they preferred Biden to replace her as his running mate.
There is no doubt that the path forward for Democrats is murky.
While Thursday night’s debate turned independents away from Biden, they did not gravitate toward Trump in any significant way.
There is a way forward for Democrats.
It does not involve President Biden or Vice President Harris.