Trump down 15 points to Biden in latest national poll

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Trump attacks Biden from Rose Garden after 2020 hopeful accuses president of mishandling COVID-19

President Trump and 2020 presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden attack each other in dueling speeches; Kristin Fisher reports from the White House.

As new cases of the coronavirus soar in much of the nation, a new national poll now shows Democratic challenger Joe Biden leading President Trump by 15 percentage points.

The Quinnipiac University poll – which was conducted July 9-13 – shows the former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee with 52 percent support among registered voters, with Trump at 37 percent support.

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Biden’s lead is almost double the 8-point advantage he held in Quinnipiac’s previous survey, which was conducted in mid-June. And it tops 14-point leads Biden held over the president in CNN and New York Times/Siena College polls conducted last month.

The survey’s Wednesday release comes with less than four months to go until the November election, which can be an eternity in campaign politics. But Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy emphasized that while “there’s still 16 weeks until Election Day, but this is a very unpleasant real time look at what the future could be for President Trump. There is no upside, no silver lining, no encouraging trend hidden somewhere in this survey for the president.”

The poll indicates Biden topping the president by a 59-35 percent on handling the pandemic, 57-38 percent on dealing with a crisis, and by a more than two-to one margin on addressing racial inequality. The survey suggests the former vice president even edging Trump 50-45 percent on handling the economy, which has long be the president’s strongest issue.

The president’s overall approval rating stands at 36 percent, a drop of 6 points from Quinnipiac’s June poll. Trump’s approval on the economy was also underwater at 44-53 percent, and only 35 percent gave the president a thumbs up on the job he’s doing steering the federal response to the pandemic.

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Two-thirds of those questioned said they don’t trust the information the president is providing about the coronavirus. In comparison, nearly two-thirds said they trust the information provided by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the well-known longtime public health expert and member of the White House coronavirus task force.

Trump and the White House have criticized Fauci in recent days. But on Wednesday the president told reporters, "We're all on the same team, including Dr. Fauci."

By a two-to-one margin, voters said they think it will be unsafe to send students to grade schools in the fall – and by the same margin they disapproved of the president’s vocal push in recent days to reopen schools.

The president and his reelection campaign the past couple of months have repeatedly slammed public opinion polling as "cheap" and "flawed," argued that those surveys under sample Republican voters, and said that their own internal polls paint a very different picture in the key swing states.

In an interview on Fox News’ “Hannity” last week, the president stressed, "I think we are doing very well in the polls. I think, if you look at the different states, I think we are doing very well. We are rapidly rising."

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The Quinnipiac poll used live telephone operators to interview 1,273 self-identified registered voters nationwide. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

An average of the latest national polls in the 2020 presidential race compiled by Real Clear Politics indicates Biden with an 8.1 point lead over Trump. More importantly, Biden enjoys single digit advantages over the president in an average of the most recent polls in many of the key battleground states where the general election will be won.

At this point in the general election four years ago, Trump trailed 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by roughly 3 points, according to Real Clear Politics. Clinton’s lead would fluctuate in the mid-single digits through the summer and into the autumn before narrowing to 3 points on the eve of the election. Clinton ended up winning the national popular vote by 2 percent.

But Trump narrowly edged Clinton in key swing states that President Obama carried in 2008 and 2012 – such as Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, giving him a large electoral college victory to win the White House.