Trump Takes 2024 Lead as Biden Approval Hits New Low, WSJ Poll Finds

WASHINGTON—President Biden’s political standing is at its weakest point of his presidency, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds, with voters giving him his lowest job-performance marks and favoring Donald Trump for the first time in a head-to-head test of the likely 2024 presidential matchup.

Biden lags behind Trump by 4 percentage points, 47% to 43%, on a hypothetical ballot with only those two candidates. Trump’s lead expands to 6 points, 37% to 31%, when five potential third-party and independent candidates are added to the mix. They take a combined 17% support, with Democrat-turned-independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. drawing the most, at 8%.

Unhappiness with Biden is pervasive in the new survey, though much of it appears among Democratic-leaning groups who might still back the president on Election Day. Only 23% of voters say Biden’s policies have helped them personally, while 53% say they have been hurt by the president’s agenda. By contrast, about half of voters say Trump’s policies when he was president helped them personally, more than the 37% who say they were hurt.

Some 37% approve of Biden’s job performance, a low in Journal polling during his presidency, while 61% see his overall image in an unfavorable light, a record high. “Bidenomics,” the president’s signature economic platform, is viewed favorably by less than 30% of voters and unfavorably by more than half.

The findings deliver the latest shock for Biden and for Democrats, some of whom have openly fretted about the 81-year-old president’s stamina and have increasingly played up warnings of 77-year-old Trump’s potential return, casting the Republican as hellbent on retribution and a danger to democracy.

“Things were thriving under Trump. This country is a business and it needs to be run by a businessman,” said Aimee Kozlowski, 53 years old, of Goffstown, N.H., a Republican who plans to vote for the former president. She said her competitive gymnastics facility has been hurt as parents look to cut costs because of inflation. She’s offered some discounts but has her own higher prices to contend with.

A Biden campaign looking for opportunities to build support, however, would find a few in the new survey.

Voters see the president as better able than Trump to handle abortion, 44% to 33%, giving him an edge on an issue proven to boost Democratic candidates. Voters who are undecided on the presidential race lean Democratic in other survey questions, suggesting that they could be persuaded to back Biden nearly a year from now.

Similarly, parts of Biden’s 2020 coalition are uncommitted as of now but could return to him by Election Day. Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, who conducted the Journal survey with Democrat Michael Bocian, is keeping a particular eye on the 24% of voters he calls “disaffected Democrats”—those in the party who say inflation, their personal finances or the country overall is moving in the wrong direction. Some 16% of these voters are undecided on their presidential vote, and 7% are backing Trump.

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