WASHINGTON (WNCN/CBS News) — A CBS News poll finds more Democrats question Biden’s ability to campaign in the 2024 Presidential Election and are divided over whether he should be the nominee, after voters say former President Donald Trump won the debate.
For months before the first debate, the nation’s voters repeatedly expressed doubts over whether President Joe Biden had the cognitive health enough to serve.
Now, those doubts have grown even more: now at nearly three-quarters of the electorate, and now including many within his own party. Also, over the weekend some Democrats on a private call with party leadership said they were being “gaslit” while the president’s cognitive issues were being ignored.
And today, after the debate with former President Trump, an increased number of voters, including many Democrats, don’t think Biden should be running for president at all. Nearly half his party doesn’t think he should now be the nominee.
The move came across the partisan board, but it includes a double-digit movement among Democrats, and movement among independents.
Given that, today nearly three in four voters also don’t think Biden should be running for president in the first place. That’s a higher-percentage sentiment from February, when almost two-thirds said he should not run.
Most voters who say he shouldn’t run say it’s both about his campaigning and his effectiveness in office, along with his age.
By Sunday — as the CBS News Poll was released — a sense of concern has grown inside the top ranks of the Democratic Party that leaders of Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee are not taking seriously enough the impact of the president’s troubling debate performance earlier in the week.
DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez held a Saturday afternoon call with dozens of committee members across the country, a group of some of the most influential members of the party. They largely ignored Biden’s weak showing Thursday night or the avalanche of criticism that followed.
Multiple committee members on the call, most granted anonymity to talk about the private discussion, described feeling like they were being gaslighted — that they were being asked to ignore the dire nature of the party’s predicament. The call, they said, may have worsened a widespread sense of panic among elected officials, donors and other stakeholders.
Instead, the people said, Harrison offered what they described as a rosy assessment of Biden’s path forward. The chat function was disabled and there were no questions allowed.
“I was hoping for more of a substantive conversation instead of, ‘Hey, let’s go out there and just be cheerleaders,’ without actually addressing a very serious issue that unfolded on American television for millions of people to see,” said Joe Salazar, an elected DNC member from Colorado, who was on the call. “There were a number of things that could have been said in addressing the situation. But we didn’t get that. We were being gaslit.”
The CBS News poll found that Democrats’ concerns about Biden, when expressed, lean more toward the strategic. They are worried more about his ability to campaign than his decision-making as president.
Trump, by contrast, finds a wide view among Republicans that he should be running.
That comes as voters widely believe that in the debate Trump presented his ideas more clearly, appeared more presidential, inspired more confidence, explained his policies better and – quite simply – won the debate.
This, despite the fact that voters overall think Trump was not as truthful.
And it’s relative, of course. There are plenty of voters who think neither candidate did well.
These views are very similar whether people watched the debate live or just watched highlights or coverage about it, which may speak more generally to the way people get and process information in the modern era.
And Biden has made no meaningful inroads on convincing voters that a second term would make them financially better off: Trump still is seen as better on this measure.
Nor has Biden cast himself as better than Donald Trump at protecting democracy.
What now?
After the debate, some Democratic officials reportedly said Joe Biden should step aside as the nominee and give another Democrat a chance to run for president in 2024.
That idea finds resonance with nearly half the nation’s rank-and-file Democrats.
That’s related to perceptions of Biden’s health: Democrats who don’t think Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve are more likely to say he shouldn’t be the nominee.
And that former number has increased among Democrats. (It’s also gone up among independents.)
The debate has brought the presidential race front and center to the minds of registered voters. Now 59% of registered voters say they are thinking a lot about the presidential race, up from 48% just a few days ago. Interest has risen among Democrats and Republicans alike.
After Thursday night’s debate, Biden appeared to acknowledge the criticism during a rally Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina, saying ”I don’t debate as well as I used to.” But he added, “I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.”
Biden was introduced at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds by N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat whose second term ends this year.
Political website Axios said Cooper is the focus of “political chatter in North Carolina and beyond, as Democrats float” possible Biden alternatives.
The CBS News/YouGov survey is based on a national sample of 1,130 registered voters who were contacted between June 28-29, 2024. All respondents participated in an earlier national survey of 1,881 registered voters fielded June 17-21, 2024. The sample was weighted by gender, age, race, and education, based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as past vote and partisan identification and weighted to account for differential response rates. The margin of error for the sample of registered voters is ±4.2 points.
By Anthony Salvanto, CBS News
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