In new polling from, of all sources, Fox News, incumbent President Joe Biden has a lead among registered voters who were 65 years of age and above — which, if eventually mirrored in the actual general election results later this year, would reverse the outcome from 2020. That year, Biden’s expected 2024 general election challenger Donald Trump was victorious in that age group, according to exit polling.
This time, the Fox polling found Biden with 51 percent of the support in that group and Trump with 45 percent when the named candidates presented to poll participants were just Trump and Biden. That set-up is probably close to the eventual results in the actual election, as candidates outside the major parties have tended to struggle to get meaningfully impactful percentages of the national vote at all once Americans are actually casting ballots, no matter the gusto of their campaigns.
Trump had a lead of just one percent when all registered voters were pooled together, which is not a large enough margin to make any kind of sweeping generalization about the actual state of the current presidential contest.
Much of the recent polling has been pretty similar. Outcomes are mixed, and when Trump leads, the margins — specifically in national polling — are generally small, making it difficult to draw impactful conclusions from the data. Trump, of course, claims that he consistently sees commanding success in the polling data, which just isn’t true. Polling comes with limitations — like the role of the state-by-state process of the electoral college in actually deciding presidents, but Trump’s wrong.
And he remains on trial in New York City, where the criminal proceedings on business records allegations will reach closing arguments before jurors next week.
