CNN’s top data reporter delivered horrible news to President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign just days after his terrible debate performance on the network against former President Donald Trump. Harry Enten appeared on the network to declare that the polling numbers for Biden have cratered to historic lows for an incumbent president this close to the November election.
“CBS News and YouGov conducted some polling post-debate. We can compare it to the pre-debate numbers, and the bottom line is, it’s not any good,” he said. “Look at this, voters who say that Biden has the mental health to be president. It was just 35% pre-debate. Look where it’s dropped to now, post-debate, 27%. How about ‘not that he should be running’ for president? It was 37% pre-debate. It’s now 28%.”
Continuing, he said: “I have never seen numbers this bad for an incumbent president during my lifetime. I mean, ‘mental health to be president’ at just 27%? You might say, okay, that’s low, but a lot of people thought Biden was too old back in 2020. These numbers looked nothing like this back in 2020. These numbers were bad already, and the truth is, they have gotten just considerably worse, even in just a few days after that first presidential debate.”
Host Alisyn Camerota asked: “Do we have polling yet that suggests voters want a different candidate?” Enten responded, “Yeah, this is the whole question, right? If it’s not President Biden, then who could it be on the Democratic side? And the truth is, there are no easy answers. I went back and looked at the polling versus Donald Trump for a bunch of different Democrats that have been suggested: Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris. Look at this, they all trail Donald Trump.”
Enten went on: “So the idea here that we’re somehow going to get this magic bullet, that there’s somehow going to be some Democrat who can beat Donald Trump easily, I just don’t see it in the numbers. At this particular point, if Joe Biden takes on Donald Trump, he’s trailing.
“If there’s another Democrat who runs against Donald Trump, they too are trailing. Perhaps you want to make the argument that you bring in another Democrat who isn’t as well-known as Joe Biden, who has universal name recognition, and maybe they could change the numbers,” he said. “But the fact is, any Democrat who entered the race right now, at least among those that are being suggested by a bunch of folks, would all enter the race at this particular point as an underdog to former President Donald Trump.”
He then went on to explain the lopsided nature of Trump’s win over Biden in the debate and what such victories historically mean. “I mean, if you want to take one solace, if you are Joe Biden, the fact is first debate winner margins. Look, Donald Trump, more people by a 34-point margin, said that Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in the debate. That’s not much different than what Joe Biden’s margin was over Donald Trump four years ago. It’s actually larger than the Hillary Clinton margin that she had over Donald Trump.
“But you may remember that first debate back in 2012 where Barack Obama just did horribly. Mitt Romney won that debate in the voters’ minds by 42 points, but of course, he didn’t become president; Barack Obama was reelected. So I guess if you want to look on the one bright note, there is a history of someone losing the first debate as an incumbent and going on to win the presidency. And that was 12 years ago,” Enten noted further.
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