President Donald Trump's opinion poll numbers -- already bad against Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden -- have grown worse as more Americans continue to condemn Trump for the new wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths sweeping the United States.
Last week, Biden held a 9-point lead over Trump in the RealClearPolitics average of major high-quality polls that asked Americans who they'd elect as U.S. the president on November 3. Political analysts point out a 9-point lead gives Biden an unusually commanding advantage for a challenger. Biden's lead today is far beyond the lead Hillary Clinton held at this point in the 2016 presidential election. She led Trump by only 3 points in the RealClearPolitics average.
This week, another poll of polls, this one from CNN, also has Biden clearly in the lead against Trump. Biden beats Trump by a large 12-point margin nationally -- 52% to 40% -- according to a CNN Poll of Polls among registered voters released Monday.
The CNN Poll of Polls includes the five most recent national telephone polls measuring the views of registered voters. The five polls were all taken as COVID-19 cases in the country continue to surge almost out of control as Trump keeps his hands off the pandemic.
Major polls conducted over the past month also give Biden a historically high advantage over Trump. The most recent one, issued last Sunday, was the new ABC News/Washington Post poll.
This survey shows Biden with a huge 15 point lead over Trump, 55% to 40% among registered voters asked whom they'd vote for as president.
It's the fifth straight high-quality national poll (or those conducted by live phone interviewers) that shows Biden beating Trump by 10 points or more. Out of the nine such polls conducted since the second half of June, Biden has defeated Trump by double digits in seven of them.
Other poll results over the past week confirm Trump's huge unpopularity among voters. A Quinnipiac University poll released last week shows Trump with a 61% unfavorable rating as regards to handling the job of U.S. president. Trump's unfavorability rating in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll was 54%. Political pundits said all this bad news was caused by Trump's incompetent handling of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Almost 3 in 10 (29%) of voters in a Fox News poll released Sunday said COVID-19 is the most important issue facing the country, a percentage far greater than any other issue named by respondents.
Political analysts said the raging pandemic is giving Biden a massive advantage in the general election. New polls consistently show more Americans trust Biden to lead American out of the pandemic than they do Trump.
All three of the polls released over the weekend show the extent of Americans' disgust at Trump's mismanagement of the pandemic. In the Quinnipiac poll, only 35% of voters said they approve of Trump's response to the pandemic compared to 42% a month ago.
The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Trump with a 37% approval rating in July, down from the previous 54%.
As for Biden, 54% of voters said they trusted him to handle the COVID-19 pandemic while 34% trust Trump, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
