President Biden’s recent disappointing poll results, lackluster approval ratings and questioning from prominent Democrats about his reelection prospects have cast a troubling shadow over his campaign.
At least one polling analysis suggests Biden is missing key messaging opportunities.
Blueprint, a new Democratic strategic research group linked to venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, released its first polling breakdown this week, which suggests that key voting groups want to hear more from Biden about driving down prices, rather than jobs, which he’s campaigned heavily on.
“It tells, in our view, a lot of story about why Bidenomics is not resonating, not working to the benefit of the president,” Evan Roth Smith of Slingshot Strategies who worked on the poll told reporters. “It’s because he’s not part of the conversation that voters are having around the economy.”
The polling also suggests Biden’s messaging touting progressive accomplishments isn’t resonating as much as others policies that voters surveyed were less familiar with.
For example, nearly all voters surveyed had heard about Biden’s $10,000 student debt forgiveness program, but it doesn’t poll among their top priorities. Meanwhile, the effort to lower junk fees is wildly popular among nearly all surveyed, but few were aware that it was one of Biden’s accomplishments.
“The president is being associated in the minds of voters with his most controversial policies, rather than his most broadly supported policies,” Smith said.
The analysis is based on a YouGov survey of 1,063 voters from Oct. 26 to Nov. 2.
Recent polls have shown Biden trailing former President Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination.
Just in the past week, a CNN poll showed Trump up 4 points nationally, a CBS News poll had Trump up 3 points, and New York Times/Siena College poll Trump leading Biden in critical swing states.
The Biden campaign released a memo downplaying the poll results.
“Over the last few days, we have seen the pundit class breathlessly making prediction after prediction about November 2024 based on polling. Take a step outside the beltway, though, and you’ll see that the best measure of how voters feel is how they are actually voting,” the campaign’s communications director Michael Tyler said in the memo.
