Majority of Democrats say Biden should step aside: Survey
A majority of Democrats in a new survey said they support President Biden withdrawing from the White House race, as questions swirl around his mental acuity and ability to serve another four years if reelected.
The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, published Thursday, found 56 percent of Democrats say they think the president should step aside and "let someone else run," after his rocky debate performance last month set off alarm bells among Democrats. Overall, 67 percent of Americans said Biden should drop out of the race.
The incumbent has faced an increasing number of calls from those in his own party to withdraw from the presidential race after the poor debate showing against President Trump, where he seemed to lack energy, stumbled over his words and had a raspy voice.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) became the first sitting Democrat in the upper chamber to call on Biden to drop out of the presidential race Wednesday via an op-ed in The Washington Post, joining several of his House colleagues who urged the president to leave the race.
"He needs to reassess whether he is the best candidate to do so. In my view, he is not,” Welch wrote. “For the good of the country, I’m calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race.”
The recent survey also found Trump and Biden are neck and neck when it comes to the popular vote, both receiving roughly 46 percent support among register voters. Those numbers were mostly unchanged from a similar poll taken in April.
Looking at the event last month, 46 percent of respondents said Trump was the winner of the debate, while Biden garnered just 7 percent of the vote. Roughly 45 percent said neither won or that they tied, per the poll.
When asked if the debate made voters feel "more favorably" or "less favorably" about the presumptive party nominees, about half said Biden's poor showing negatively affected their view. Roughly 22 percent said the same about Trump.
Just 7 percent said they viewed the incumbent "more favorably," after the forum, and about 27 percent said the same of the former president, the survey found.
Still, most Americans say both candidates are too old to serve another term. About 85 percent of survey respondents said Biden was too old, while 60 percent said Trump was.
About 50 percent of respondents also said the former president should step aside and allow someone else to top the GOP ticket in November. Broken down by party, Democrats made up 88 percent of that vote, compared to 11 percent of Republicans, per the poll.
Despite growing calls to drop from the race against Trump, Biden and his allies have pushed back, with the president saying in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos last week that “if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race. The Lord Almighty’s not comin’ down.”
The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted July 5-9 featured 2,431 people and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points for the full sample. That number includes 825 registered Democrats, with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.