More than 70% of voters believe Biden is not mentally fit to serve a second term as president, a notable increase from the last poll following his poor performance in last week’s debate.
of CBS News Poll According to the results of the poll released Sunday, 72% of respondents do not believe Biden’s health is suitable to be president, while only 27% believe it is. This is a notable increase from last month’s poll, in which 65% of respondents said Biden was not in good enough health, to 35% who said he was in good enough health.
Biden’s performance in the first debate alarmed some Democrats and supporters. The president at times appeared to struggle to gather his thoughts and looked fatigued overall. There have been growing calls among Democrats, including some lawmakers who declined to be named, for Biden to step aside and allow another candidate to win the party’s nomination.
The poll found that just 28% of voters think Biden should run for a second term, down from 37% in a February poll. Among Democrats, just 54% say Biden should run again, down from 64% in February.
Of those who said Biden should not seek reelection, 86% cited his age as the reason.
Overall, 45% of Democrats said Biden should step aside and not accept his party’s nomination, while 55% said he should continue his reelection campaign.
Looking back at the debates, few people said Biden presented his ideas clearly (21%) or instilled credibility (18%), while former President Trump scored much higher on those factors: About 47% of respondents said Trump presented his ideas clearly and about 44% said he instilled credibility.
Despite Biden’s poor performance, more respondents said he told the truth in the debates (40%) than Trump (32%).
The CBS News/YouGov poll was conducted June 28-29 among about 1,100 registered voters and has a margin of error of about 4.2 percentage points.
