President Joe Biden and his allies are seeing troubling trends in new polling that shows him losing support with independent voters.
"There are going to be a fair number of cross-pressured voters — including many people who consider themselves independents — who hold a negative view of Biden and [former President Donald] Trump," Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics told The Hill. "These are the folks who are going to decide the election."
Recent polling finds Biden getting a job approval rating with independents of just 36% in an NBC News survey from mid-September, while 3 in 5 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents polled by the Washington Post and ABC News want to see a different Democratic candidate in the race.
According to a Pew Research article from June 2021, independent voters helped get Biden across the finish line in 2020 with a 9-point lead over Trump, 52% to 43%, as Republican and Democrats were almost evenly split with 94% respective support for the candidates.
That 9-point span is currently going to Trump, 51% to 42%, according to the new Post-ABC poll of all adult voters.
That poll shows voters are now looking back at Trump with a more favorable view than they had when he left office in 2021.
Just 38% of voters approved of Trump in January 2021, but 48% now say they approved of the former president's job performance.
The poll found that 56% of voters disapprove of Biden's job performance and 75% now say they approve of Trump's tenure.
The recent poll was conducted for ABC News by Langer Research Associates via phone calls with 1,006 adults on Sept. 15-20, and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
The economy appears to be the top issue for voters, with 74% rating conditions as "not so good," or "poor," and a huge 91% feeling that way about food prices, followed closely by 87% who have a negative view of gas and energy prices.
Despite the gloom of the polling, pundits are saying that once the Biden campaign gets out the message of his wins as president, voters will pull the lever for him in the general election against Trump.
"We [saw] from Biden's last race, and the midterms as well, that independents are sticking with him," Democrat strategist Eddie Vale told The Hill.
Another source agreed with Vale about getting the Democrat's message out.
"They will message these wins directly to independents as the campaign gears up," the source told the news outlet. "I don't doubt that they will get this right and be fine."