Majority says Obama would handle coronavirus better than Trump, who tops Biden: poll

A majority of registered voters said they think that former President Obama would do a better job at handling the coronavirus pandemic than President Trump, according to a Politico-Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday.

That same group of respondents said they think that Trump is being a better leader during the outbreak than former Vice President Biden, who is the front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

In the new poll, 52 percent of the survey’s 1,990 respondents said they believed that Obama would be a better leader than Trump during the ongoing pandemic, compared to the 38 percent who said they thought Trump is the better leader.

On a different question, 44 percent said they thought that Trump would be the better leader when compared to Biden, who got 36 percent support from the respondents.

The poll also asked voters about their overall thoughts regarding the president’s job performance.

A majority of voters, 54 percent, said they disapproved of Trump’s job performance in the poll, which was conducted April 3-5, while 44 percent said they approved.

Over the past few months, Trump has received mixed reactions in public polling over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. A number of polls have shown a majority of Americans have approved of the job Trump has been doing amid the pandemic.

However, the president has also received mounting criticism from lawmakers and others who say his administration has not done enough to combat the growing outbreak across the country, which now has roughly 400,000 cases, with more than 12,900 deaths and more than 22,500 recoveries. 

In the new poll released on Wednesday, when asked about the job the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, a majority of voters, 50 percent, said the his office has not done enough in its handling of the outbreak. Thirty-eight percent, by contrast, said his administration is doing the right amount and 4 percent said they believe the administration is doing too much.

The Politico-Morning Consult poll conducted interviews online and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. The poll was weighted “to approximate a target sample of Registered Voters based on age, educational attainment, gender, race, and region.”