Biden leads by 5 points nationally in Fox News poll

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Trump by 5 percentage points among likely voters in a national Fox News poll released Sunday.

Biden has an advantage of 51 percent to 46 percent in the survey, Fox News’s first since the party conventions this summer and its first to question likely voters.

The poll found Biden leading among women, suburbanites, seniors, millennials, Hispanics and African Americans, while Trump leads with white voters, men, rural voters, white Catholics, Generation X and veterans.

Voters prefer Biden to Trump on the issue of racial inequality by 12 points, handling the coronavirus by 8 points, health care by 8 points, Supreme Court nominations by 7 points and immigration by 7 points. Biden also has a 7-point advantage on policing and criminal justice and a slimmer 2-point advantage on maintaining law and order.

The one issue where Trump maintains an advantage is the economy, with a 5-point lead.

A survey of voter concerns found that 87 percent of respondents are concerned about unemployment and 83 percent are concerned about the coronavirus pandemic. Although the president has made crime and violence central to his attacks on Biden, a smaller majority, 64 percent, said they are concerned about the issue.

Polled on whether the candidates have the compassion to serve as president, 62 percent said Biden does, compared with 44 percent who said Trump does. Fifty-one percent said Biden has the mental soundness to serve as president, compared with 47 percent who say the same of Trump.

While a majority disapprove of the president’s response to the coronavirus, positive views on the U.S. handling of the virus is up slightly from August. Eleven percent called the virus “completely” under control in the U.S., compared with 7 percent last month, while 19 percent said it was “mostly” under control, compared with 12 percent in August.

Forty percent said the virus was “not at all” under control, down from 49 percent in August. Thirty percent called it “somewhat” under control, statistically unchanged from 29 percent in August.

Pollsters surveyed a sample of 1,191 likely voters and 1,311 registered voters from Sep. 7 to Sept. 10. The poll has a 2.5 percentage point margin of error.