(CN) — New polling data released Wednesday shows former Vice President Joe Biden increasing his lead over President Donald Trump nationally as more Americans say they disapprove of the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and the nationwide police brutality protests.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll reveals that as the United States continues to navigate through one of its most turbulent periods in living memory, more voters continue to show their support for the former vice president ahead of November’s general election. According to Wednesday’s poll, 48% of voters say are throwing their support behind Biden compared to the 35% that say the same for Trump.
This commanding 13-point lead currently stands as the largest advantage Biden has held over the president since the start of this year, when the Democratic Party held nominating contests that ultimately produced Biden as the presumptive candidate to face Trump come November.
Biden’s lead over Trump could partly be due to the fact that Trump’s job performance approval ratings continue to slip. The poll reports that just 38% of adults in the county say they believe that Trump is doing a good job in office, a percentage that about squares with the 35% of voters who say they will support Trump this election cycle.
Nearly 6 in 10 voters say they disapprove of Trump’s job performance.
This approval deficit for the president marks the lowest approval performance for Trump since last November, just a month before the House of Representatives officially approved two articles of impeachment against him.
Wednesday’s poll largely falls in line with other recent data that shows Trump struggling with approval ratings.
A CNN poll conducted earlier this month showed that 38% of Americans approved of Trump’s job performance in office while 57% voiced their disapproval, an approval ratio identical to the Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The CNN poll also echoes Wednesday’s poll regarding how Trump fares when pitted against his democratic 2020 rival, with the CNN poll giving Biden a 14-point lead over the president — one point higher than the 13-point lead reported by the Reuters/Ipsos poll.
In a potential dire development for the president, support from his party seems to show some signs of deterioration in recent months. While previous polling data taken throughout Trump’s tenure in office has typically showed solid GOP support for the president, Reuters/Ipsos data reveals that Trump’s net approval from Republicans has dropped 13 points from March to June, slipping gradually from month-to-month.
While this decrease may not be enough to indicate some form of a mass-rejection of Trump within his own party at this point, it nonetheless could be a troubling forecast for the president as he enters a hotly contested and potentially close election.
These numbers come in as Trump is facing increased criticism for his handling of two issues that continue to dominate airwaves and capture public attention: the Covid-19 outbreak and sweeping demonstrations over police brutality sparked by the death of George Floyd.
As more than 116,000 people in the United States have died from Covid-19 and some reopened states, like Florida and Texas, see spikes in cases, more Americans are voicing their disapproval over how Trump has managed the crisis. While four-in-10 Americans feel like the president has done a good job managing the outbreak, 55% say Trump has done a poor job.
This net approval for Trump’s handling of the virus stands as the worst rating for the president since March, when the outbreak began in earnest around the United States.
Wednesday’s poll is once again not alone in reporting that dissatisfaction. The CNN poll from earlier this month showed that 55% of Americans — the same amount that gave Trump a poor coronavirus approval rating in Wednesday’s poll — said they think that Biden would do a better job than the president at handling the coronavirus outbreak.
The president has also faced some criticism for how he has responded to the recent protests across the country over police brutality, particularly in the wake of an incident earlier this month when police in D.C. removed a large group of peaceful protesters near the White House so that Trump could hold a photo op outside a Washington church.
Wednesday’s poll reports that roughly two-thirds of Americans say they sympathize with the protesters around the county, while the CNN poll showed that just 31% of Americans believe that Trump is the 2020 candidate best equipped to deal with race relations.
Trump is not without one area where he polls above his rival, however, as Trump continues to poll slightly better than Biden over the economy. As businesses around the county continue to reel from the coronavirus outbreak, 43% of voters in Wednesday’s poll say they believe Trump is the best candidate to manage the economy compared to the 38% that say the same for Biden.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll contained a sample size of 4,426 American adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2%.
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