President Biden leads former President Trump by 2 points in a national poll of the presidential election published Wednesday by Fox News, taking a lead for the first time since last October.
A bare majority, 50 percent, of respondents said they would vote for Biden in November, while 48 percent said they would back Trump. It’s a 3-point improvement for Biden over last month’s Fox News poll, where Trump led by 1 point.
Wednesday’s poll marks the first time Biden has cracked 50 percent support this election cycle, and the first time he has led Trump in a Fox poll since October 2023.
When third-party candidates are included in the poll, Biden leads Trump by 1 point, 43 percent to 42 percent. Independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West received 10 percent and 2 percent support, respectively, while Green candidate Jill Stein got 2 percent support. In May’s poll of the field, Trump led by 3 points.
The poll could show the impact of Trump’s felony conviction earlier this month, as polls across the board have since shown Biden gaining on — and at points overtaking — the former president.
Among one of the race’s most critical demographics, independent voters, Biden leads Trump by 9 points. That’s an 11-point shift from May, when they favored Trump by 2 points.
“The underlying demographic tendencies that have defined the race remain in place,” said Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducted the survey. “Biden has improved slightly with women and seniors, which keeps him afloat despite significant reductions from 2020 in support from younger voters and African Americans.”
Respondents were also more positive about the economy than in previous months. Nearly a third, 32 percent, of respondents said they have an excellent or good feeling about the economy, the highest mark of Biden’s presidency.
Despite that, a 56 percent majority of respondents still had a negative outlook on the economy.
Overall, Biden has 45 percent job approval, the poll found.
The Fox News poll surveyed about 1,100 registered voters nationwide, with a margin of error of about 3 percent.