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The 2024 race could come down to Joe Biden the backslapper versus Donald Trump the strongman.
New Gallup polling testing each candidate’s individual qualities finds that the president’s personality remains his biggest asset heading into the general election — 57% agree he’s “likable,” down from 66% in 2020 but still a solid majority. Only 37% say the same of Trump, virtually unchanged from a pre-election survey in September 2020. There’s also some unusual partisan overlap on the topic in comparison to other polling questions: 26% of Republicans rate Biden as likable, while only 63% rate Trump as such.
But Trump retains an advantage on “strong and decisive leader” — 57% of Americans say they agree with that characterization, which is also similar to his 2020 numbers. Biden never led on this question: Only 46% called him “strong and decisive” in 2020, and it’s dropped to 38% since then. 92% of Republicans view Trump as “strong,” the highest share of any trait tested.
Overall, Trump’s personal ratings are nearly identical to 2020. He dropped 5 points on “honest and trustworthy,” from 40% to 35%, but that’s the most movement of any trait tested by Gallup.
That’s good news for Biden, in theory, who only needs to reconstitute his 2020 coalition to win. But views about his own traits have worsened significantly. In some cases, weak spots for Trump are now a relative advantage: Only 39% say Biden “can manage the government effectively,” down from 52% in 2020, while 49% say Trump can do the same. Only 40% say Biden “displays good judgment in a crisis,” down from 49% in 2020 and now behind the 45% who approve of Trump’s judgment.
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Biden’s dip in his personal numbers is hardly surprising: As Gallup notes, it largely mirrors his fall in approval ratings, which currently sit at 40% in the latest Gallup poll. But Trump’s favorability has also crept up in some polls since his presidency, and it’s notable Gallup finds Americans still locked into roughly the same picture of him they had in 2020.
Gallup also asked two new questions, one about intelligence and another about whether the candidate “puts the country’s interests ahead of his own political interests.” There was no big split on intelligence: 56% described each candidate as such. Same with the second question, even as Trump faces two criminal cases centered around his efforts to overturn the last election: 45% of respondents said each candidate places the country ahead of their political interests.
With neither candidate looking especially popular, the so-called “double haters” — voters who dislike both candidates — seem poised to again play a major role in deciding the outcome. Gallup’s polling in March also found 29% of respondents thought neither Biden nor Trump “would be a good president,” relatively similar to the 25% who said the same in July and August of 2020. Forty-two percent of independents are in the “neither” camp, and they’ve soured on Biden a bit since the last election.
Notable
When it comes to the issues confronting voters, Gallup found Americans are worrying less about the economy and more about immigration in 2024 than they were last year.