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Two polls on Sunday showed Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump as concerns about the economy and divisions within the Democratic party over the war between Israel and Hamas drag down the US president’s 2024 re-election prospects.
A New York Times/Siena poll showed Biden trailing Trump in five of the six key battleground states, fueled by doubts about his handling of the economy, questions about his age and dissatisfaction with other issues such as the Israel-Hama conflict .
A CBS News poll also showed Trump ahead of Biden a year before the 2024 election. The poll found that more voters thought they would be better off financially if Trump won in 2024, and that Biden had failed to win over Democrats the way Trump had won over Republicans.
American voters are more likely to vote on domestic issues, such as the economy, than on foreign policy. But both polls show Biden facing widespread discontent on a range of issues, including national security.
Voters said they trusted Trump on the economy by 59 percent and 37 percent respectively over Biden, the largest gap on any issue, the New York Times poll found. Across the electorate, Trump got better marks on the economy, regardless of gender, age, education or income level.
If the election were held now, Biden would lose to Trump in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania by a margin of three to 10 percentage points, the New York Times poll showed. Biden is ahead by two percentage points in Wisconsin. He carried all of these states in 2020.
The war between Israel and Hamas in particular has splintered the Democratic party, with younger voters and people of color breaking with the president and potentially sinking his prospects in the 2024 contest.
A New York Times poll found that demographic groups that had supported Biden by significant margins in 2020 were now much more hotly contested, with two-thirds of the electorate saying the country was moving in the wrong direction.
Voters under 30 favored Biden by just one percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters had fallen significantly and he had less of an advantage in urban areas than Trump in rural areas, the poll showed.
Biden is under pressure from some Democrats who want him to support an immediate end to the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Biden has said he supports Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas in Gaza after the group launched a deadly attack last month. But he has urged Israel to follow the international laws of war and do more to prevent civilian casualties.
Palestinian American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Biden’s fiercest critic, accused him of supporting the “genocide of the Palestinian people” and said “support a ceasefire now or don’t count on us in 2024.”
When asked about these comments on ABC News on Sunday, US Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer said that while the administration disagreed with some of the terms used to describe the conflict, they knew it would provoke strong responses.
“We know this is a conflict about which there are strong opinions on all sides,” he said.
“We believe [some of the terms] technical definitions, have a certain historical resonance and weight, and that we do not accept its application to this particular war, even as we continue to express our serious concerns about the toll this is taking on civilian life and the need to do more to Protect it.”