(CN) — A new survey from the Pew Research Center indicates that while the ongoing presidential race is a dead heat, voters aren’t particularly happy with their choices.
The national survey, conducted in the second week of April using Pew’s American Trends Panel, showed presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump with a 1% edge on President Joe Biden in the upcoming election, but also asked a number of questions about each candidate’s physical, mental and moral fitness for the job. Neither candidate cracked 40% on any of those metrics.
Biden beat out Trump by a decent margin on questions about ethical fitness, with a total of 38% of those polled saying they were “very” or “extremely” confident that he respects democratic values and 32% very or extremely confident that he would act ethically in office. Trump, by contrast, pulled 34% and 23% on those questions, respectively. Biden also slightly outperformed Trump on the question of whether the candidates picked good advisers, 30% to Trump’s 28%.
Voter confidence in the incumbent’s mental and physical fitness, however, was low. Only 21% of voters were “very” or “extremely” confident that Biden had the mental fitness to be president, and 14% said the same of his physical fitness. Trump performed better in both categories, with 38% expressing faith in his mental fitness and 37% saying they were confident in his physical fitness.
All five of those categories, however, saw both candidates rack up strong negative responses. Nearly half of the respondents (47%) said they were “not at all” confident in Biden’s physical or mental fitness or in Trump’s ability to act ethically in office. And 43% expressed a similar lack of confidence in Trump’s respect for democratic values — the only category where Biden’s “very” and “somewhat” confident voters outnumbered the “not at all” confident ones. Trump scored well as compared to the “not at all” vote on the mental and physical fitness questions, but those confident in his abilities were still dwarfed by the combination of “not at all” and “not too” confident voters.
Despite this dissatisfaction, most voters agree who wins this race is important: 69% overall, with Trump and Biden supporters evenly matched on that topic. While that majority is comfortable, it’s a drop from April 2020, when 70% of overall voters said the outcome of the election matters.
A lack of confidence in the candidates poses critical questions for voters in the handful of swing states likely to decide the election, according to Hamline University political science professor David Schultz. “A large chunk of the population is just not enthusiastic about their choices,” he said. “The question now becomes, what are they going to do? Do they hold their nose and vote for one of the two candidates? Do they stay home on Election Day? Or do they vote for, let’s say, I don’t know, RFK Jr., either because they like him or as a protest vote?”
Third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left-wing independent Cornel West or perennial Green Party candidate Jill Stein could benefit from the lack of confidence, Schultz said, but such candidates often enjoy higher polling months before Election Day than they do in November. The same could be said of Trump’s razor’s-edge lead in the Pew survey. “Polls are not predictors, they’re snapshots in time," he said. "What a poll tells us today is not what’s going to happen on election day, lots of things are going to happen in the upcoming months.”
Approval of Biden’s job performance, meanwhile, remains low. Approximately 35% of those polled rated Biden’s work in office favorably. While that represents a slight increase from 33% in January, it’s a notable decrease from his peak approval rating of 59% early in 2021. The 33% in January marked Biden’s lowest approval rating, though his approval among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents at that time sat at 61% and has since improved to 65%.
For Schultz, the biggest issue facing Biden is the economy. “The public is not giving Biden credit for, rightly or wrongly, the economy,” he said. While Wall Street and Main Street are both doing better than they were a few years ago, Schultz noted the average resident on “Elm Street” — not the site of the nightmare, necessarily, but the residential suburban road — is still suffering from high gas and food prices.
Foreign policy is also a concern. “We have polling data that suggests that for people under the age of 30, Biden’s stance on Israel and Gaza is a major factor,” Schultz said. The Biden administration has come under fire in recent months for its consistent support of Israel's ongoing military operations in Palestine, escalating this week to arrests of protesters on college campuses across the country.
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