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President Biden has long depicted this Trump as a major threat to democracy in the US.
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Biden used the argument against the Republican Party in 2022, with many Democrats later praising the strategy.
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But a new WaPo-George Mason Univ. Polls show swing state voters give Trump an edge on this issue.
President Joe Biden has deployed a key plank of his re-election campaign by portraying former President Donald Trump as one of the greatest political threats to democracy in the United States.
It was an issue that Biden played heavily against the Republican Party in the 2022 midterm elections. He issued a stern warning a week before the elections, arguing that “democracy is in danger.”
“We are often not confronted with the question of whether the vote we cast will preserve democracy,” he said at the time. “But this year it is.”
Democrats ultimately retained control of the Senate and lost their majority in the House by a much narrower margin than predicted, with many in the party arguing that Biden’s message had been a success.
But ahead of the November election, voters in six key swing states gave Trump an advantage over who would be better suited to dealing with threats to democracy, a reflection of the ongoing challenges Biden faces as he seeks a second term.
In a survey of registered voters conducted by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government from mid-April to late May, Trump led Biden 44 percent to 33 percent on the Democratic vote. Sixteen percent of respondents said neither candidate had an advantage in defending democracy, and seven percent said both men were equally capable of tackling the issue.
Among the “deciders,” which include voters who only voted in the White House in one of the past two elections, are between the ages of 18 and 25, have been registered voters since 2022, or are not planning to vote for Biden or Trump to support in the upcoming election – Trump has a nine-point lead (38% to 29%) over Biden on democracy issues. Nearly a quarter (23%) of “decision makers” said neither candidate was adept at handling the issue, while 10% said both candidates could handle the issue effectively.
The findings come at a critical juncture for the Biden campaign, shortly before a debate on Thursday that has the potential to reshape the tight presidential battle between the incumbent president and the ex-president.
Biden took office promising to be an effective steward of the federal government just days after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — where pro-Trump supporters tried to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
But Republicans have since overwhelmingly backed Trump, with many GOP lawmakers downplaying the Jan. 6 riot and claiming the ex-president would be a better leader on the world stage.
Read the original article on Business Insider
