Former President Donald Trump leads President Biden by four points, with fewer than a quarter of Americans saying they think the sitting president is “mentally astute,” according to a poll released Thursday.
of Pew Research Center survey Among more than 7,000 registered voters, the poll found that Trump, 78, was leading Biden, 81, by a 44% to 40% margin, with 15% backing independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In head-to-head races, the presumptive Republican candidate leads the incumbent by 3 percentage points, 50% to 47%, an improvement from Trump’s 49% to 48% lead in April.
The poll found that just 24% of voters agreed that Biden is “mentally astute,” a big difference from the 58% who said the term describes Trump very or quite well.
The numbers for the octogenarian president mark a significant drop from March 2021, when Biden peaked at 54% describing him as “mentally astute.”
In contrast, Pew Research Center’s latest poll found that 50% of voters now view Trump as “mentally astute,” compared with 50% in an October 2020 survey.
The poll was conducted July 1-7 after Biden’s disastrous defeat in the June 27 debate with Trump but comes at a tense time for the president, with doubts being cast over Biden’s intelligence and ability to beat Trump in November and a flurry of calls from Democrats for him to end his reelection bid.
Biden’s latest embarrassing gaffe came in front of world leaders and international reporters at the NATO summit in Washington on Thursday, when Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin,” confusing him with the Russian dictator.
The gaffe came just hours after top Biden campaign advisers met with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill to ease growing concerns about the president’s re-election prospects.
A Pew Research Center survey found that Biden received higher marks than Trump for “honesty” (48% to 36%), and more voters viewed the former president as “mean” than the incumbent president, 64% to 31%.
Both candidates are considered equally “embarrassing” among registered voters, with 63% saying the word “embarrassing” applies to both Trump and Biden.
