Following Sunday’s assassination attempt, former President Trump’s approval rating has risen in a new poll, while a majority of Americans believe President Biden should drop out of the race.
be New ABC News/Ipsos PollA poll released Sunday found that 40% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Republican presidential nominee Trump, while 51% have an unfavorable view. Seven percent said they had no opinion and 2% said they didn’t know.
ABC News reported. This was Trump’s highest favorability rating for most of the past four years, during which his ratings had been in the low to mid 30s.
Biden’s numbers were slightly worse, with 32% of Americans saying they had a favorable view of the president and 55% saying they had an unfavorable view, while 9% said they had no opinion and 4% said they didn’t know.
When it comes to Biden’s prospects for reelection, 61% of Americans said he should end his 2024 campaign and let the Democratic Party choose another candidate, while 37% said he should continue the campaign. 1% of respondents omitted the question.
A slight majority of Republicans (44%) said Biden should continue to seek the presidency, compared with 39% of Democrats.
More than half of Americans (55%) say they are unhappy with Biden becoming the Democratic nominee for president, but about 58% of Democrats say they are happy with Biden as their party’s nominee.
The figures come after a dramatic few weeks of political events, culminating this week with the Republican National Convention, where Trump was formally nominated as the party’s presidential candidate. It comes just days after Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, wounding one spectator and killing another, while two other attendees were injured but in stable condition.
Biden, meanwhile, is facing growing pressure from party leaders to step down amid concerns about his ability to beat Trump to a second term, a concern further fuelled by his dismal performance in last month’s debate, where he frequently paused and appeared to lose his train of thought.
Biden, 81, has rejected calls to drop out of the race and insists he can beat Trump in the election.
The ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted July 19-20 among 1,141 adults aged 18 and older, and has a sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
