A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll confirms what most viewers suspected after Thursday’s presidential debate: It was a disastrous night for the 81-year-old President Biden. He looked unsteady, sounded ill, stumbled over his words and at one point completely lost his train of thought.
For example, a full 60% of Americans now say Biden is not “fit to serve another term as president.” Only 24% say he is fit. The president’s fitness rating has only been this low once before, in November 2023, and it has never been this bad.
Still, the survey of 1,754 U.S. adults, conducted June 28 to July 1, also found that Biden (43%) is statistically tied with his Republican rival, former President Donald Trump (45%), in a head-to-head contest among registered voters — even after a performance that seemed to confirm longstanding concerns about the president’s age and future competence.
In short, Biden’s vulnerability has never been more apparent, but Trump is still too flawed to fully exploit it.
A truly terrible debate for Biden
There’s no sugarcoating Biden’s debate numbers. About three in four Americans (74%) say they watched the debate (56%) or saw enough video clips afterward to have an opinion about how it went (18%). A whopping 84% of registered voters report watching the debate (66%) or seeing video clips afterward (18%).
Among that group of registered voters, a clear majority (57%) say Trump won the debate. Only 16% say Biden was the winner.
It’s rare, in our hyper-polarized era, to see such a wide margin. It’s also a big shift from 2020. To put the president’s dismal debate numbers in perspective, Yahoo News/YouGov polls conducted that October — using identical questions — showed Biden easily beating Trump among registered voters in their first debate (43% to 27%), while also beating him in their second clash (48% to 41%). Yet in neither case did a majority of Americans name Biden the winner.
The other responses from voters familiar with the debate tell a similar story:
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A full 63% rated Biden’s performance as “poor”; another 21% rated it as “fair.” That’s a combined negative performance rating of 84%. Just 16% rated Biden’s performance as excellent or good. After their second debate four years ago, Biden’s positive performance rating was 53%, while his negative rating was 47%.
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In contrast, half of voters familiar with the debate rated Trump’s performance as excellent or good (50%), and half as fair or poor (50%). That’s significantly better than the 25% and 75%, respectively, who said the same after the first debate in 2020.
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A majority say the debate made them think worse of Biden (51%); few say it made them think better of him (12%). Trump’s numbers are evenly split between worse (27%) and better (29%).
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Asked which candidate seemed most “coherent” during the debate, 58% now say Trump, and just 15% say Biden. After the first debate in 2020, Biden was seen as more coherent by a margin of 42% to 34%.
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Asked which candidate seemed “stronger” during the debate, 59% now say Trump, and just 17% say Biden. After the first debate in 2020, Biden (40%) and Trump (40%) were tied on this metric.
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Asked which candidate seemed more “presidential” during the debate, 45% said Trump and only 37% said Biden. After the first debate in 2020, Biden was seen as more presidential by a margin of 49% to 27%.
As a result, many more Americans familiar with the debate selected “embarrassing” (61%), “painful” (49%) or “frightening” (43%) over “inspiring” (10%) or “reassuring” (8%) when asked to characterize their overall impression of it. And it was Biden’s performance that they held “more responsible” for making the debate embarrassing (50% Biden, 24% Trump), painful (50% Biden, 20% Trump) and frightening (42% Biden, 29% Trump).
Still, a whopping 54% of Americans say there should be more debates, including 63% of current Trump supporters and 53% of current Biden supporters. Just 25% think Thursday’s showdown should be the last of the 2024 election cycle.
A second debate is currently scheduled for September and both candidates have indicated they will participate.
The president loses some ground, but remains neck and neck with Trump
The latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll, conducted shortly after Trump’s May 31 conviction for falsifying corporate records to conceal a libel payment to a porn star, found Biden (46%) narrowly ahead of his rival (44%) in a two-way battle for the White House.
But it was a high point for the president. The previous six Yahoo News/YouGov polls showed Trump leading or tied with Biden among registered voters in a head-to-head race. At 46%, Biden’s support was the highest since August 2023.
The new, post-debate Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows Biden (43%) falling back to where he was late last year, when Trump led 44% to 42%. And Biden (40%) continues to trail Trump (44%) — by a slightly wider margin than last month — when voters are given the option to choose “another candidate” before choosing from a field that includes independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (4%) and others.
Trump, meanwhile, has only once before topped 45% in a Yahoo News/YouGov poll — a ceiling he again failed to crack in the latest poll, suggesting there is a hard limit to his potential support. It’s worth noting that Trump has run for president twice before, and has never received more than 47% of the vote.
As a result, the two-way race remains effectively a tie – a rematch between two unpopular candidates with little crossover appeal. Trump’s approval rating (39% favorable, 56% unfavorable) is actually slightly worse than it was before the debate (42% favorable, 53% unfavorable) – making it statistically identical to Biden’s (39% favorable, 55% unfavorable).
Meanwhile, Biden’s job approval rating remains well underwater (38% approve, 57% disapprove) — but it’s no worse than it was before the debate. By contrast, Trump’s retrospective approval of the job he did as president has fallen from 47% approve, 48% disapprove to 45% approve, 50% approve.
A full 45% of Americans familiar with the debate say Trump was the most “untruthful” candidate. Just 33% think Biden had a looser relationship with the truth.
The biggest warning sign for Biden
The debate may have had only a modest effect on Biden’s standing vis-à-vis Trump. But it appears to have had a larger impact on perceptions of Biden’s fitness to continue serving as president.
Only 24% now say Biden is fit for another term, down five percentage points from 29% in early June. 60% say he is not, up four percentage points (from 56%).
That means Trump’s fitness score (43%) is now almost 20 points higher than Biden’s. This gap has only widened.
Among Democrats, Biden’s fitness rating (53%, down 10 points from early June) has never been lower.
Overall, 56% of Americans — more than ever before — say Biden’s age is a “major issue” about his fitness to be president, up six points since early June. Nearly two-thirds (65%) say Biden is “too old to serve another term as president,” and just 28% say he is “equal to the challenges facing America.”
Perhaps the most obvious shift came in a question asking whether Biden’s age or Trump’s criminal charges were the biggest issue when it comes to their fitness to be president. Before the debate, slightly more Americans said Trump’s criminal charges (43%) were a bigger issue than Biden’s age (38%). But now those numbers have flipped to 38% and 42%, respectively.
Perhaps that’s why 45% of Americans now think Trump has the best chance of winning the 2024 election, compared to just 25% for Biden. Before the debate, Biden’s number was eight points higher; Trump’s was six points lower.
Among Democrats, Biden’s percentage fell 11 percentage points, from 68% to 57%.
Should Biden withdraw?
Post-debate fears about Biden’s November prospects have fueled a new round of speculation about whether he might withdraw and hand the nomination to a younger Democrat. (Biden has insisted he is staying in the race.)
A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll finds that just over a third of registered voters who identify as Democrats or independents with a Democratic leaning (36%) want the president to leave office, up from 28% in March.
More Democrats and Democratic supporters (45%) still want Biden to continue, but that number is now far from a majority after dropping 10 points (from 55%) over the same period.
If Biden withdraws, more Democrats and Democratic supporters would continue to favor “someone else” (42%) than Vice President Kamala Harris (38%) as their replacement candidate — though Harris’ numbers have steadily improved from a low of 30% in August 2022.
A growing number of registered Democratic voters also say they would prefer Harris (31%) over California Gov. Gavin Newsom (17%), Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (8%), Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (7%) or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (6%) in a last-minute primary.
In February 2023, 25% favored Harris, while Newsom, Buttigieg and Sanders all had 12% favorability.
Harris (45%) faces Trump in a hypothetical two-way race, but still trails the former Republican president (47%). However, she enjoys slightly more support than Biden, in part because she is doing six points better among independents and five points better among voters aged 30 to 44.
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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,754 U.S. adults interviewed online June 3–6, 2024. The sample was weighted by gender, age, race, education, turnout in the 2020 election and presidential election, basic party identification, and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets are from the 2019 American Community Survey. Basic party identification is the respondent’s most recent response provided before November 1, 2022, and is weighted by the estimated split at that time (33% Democratic, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.9%.
