Former President Donald Trump early Thursday touted the results of a new NPR/PBSNewsHour/Marist poll showing him ahead of President Joe Biden by 8 percentage points among independents.
"54 to 42," Trump said outside the Manhattan courtroom where jurors are to reconvene for deliberations in his business records trial. "That's among independents. That's the best we've ever done, the poll says, among independents."
According the poll, Biden and Trump are in a statistical tie — with 50% for Biden and 48% for Trump lying within the margin of error — but Trump pulled out the lead of 54%-42% over Biden among independents.
However, the two were evenly matched, with Biden at 49% and Trump at 47% among voters who said they have an unfavorable opinion of them.
Meanwhile, Trump came out four points ahead of Biden, at 44% to 40% when independent candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, as well as Green Party candidate Jill Stein were added in.
The full field poll results:
- Trump 44%
- Biden 40%
- RFK Jr. 8%
- Stein 3%
- West 2%
Kennedy pulled support evenly from both Biden and Trump. Stein and West, meanwhile, pulled supporters from Biden but not from Trump, according to the poll.
Part of Biden's waning support also comes as younger voters are choosing Trump over him, the poll showed.
Biden showed just a 4-point lead over Trump with voters under the age of 45 and by 6 points with GenZ/Millennial voters.
"They don't see a lot of connection to him," Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, wrote in his analysis. "They're worried about the cost of living, which isn't reserved just for them, but clearly, as they envision moving into adulthood, cost of living, housing costs, how to get into that next step seems to be an obstacle."
The poll further showed 24% of voters ages 18-29 said they approve of Biden's job performance, but Trump scored a net-positive rating — 49%-42%, showing his highest favorability among the age demographic yet.
Still, younger voters were among the most likely to have an unfavorable opinion of both candidates.
"This is the unsatisfied, unattached, disliking-of-the-candidates group," Miringoff said. "So it's not that they're racing to Trump, they're just not where Biden's had this group in the past."
Voters under 45 and Gen Z/Millennials were also the most likely to say they will skip voting for president altogether (12%), and the least likely to say they are definitely voting (69%).
The age bracket was also the most likely to say they are voting for Kennedy (11%).
The Marist poll conducted for NPR and PBS NewsHour was conducted May 21-23 among 1,122 national registered voters, and the results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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