The Biden campaign has criticized former President Donald Trump as a threat to democracy, but undecided swing-state voters trust him over the current president on the topic, according to a poll released Monday.
The Biden campaign aired an ad ahead of Trump’s June 13 visit to Capitol Hill that alleged he was “the instigator of an insurrection” and that he is “pledging to pardon the extremists who tried to overthrow our government, inciting them to try again,” The Hill reported. Over half of respondents said that threats to democracy is a top issue, with 38% saying they trust Trump more on handling it compared to 29% who said the same for Biden, according to the Washington Post-Schar School poll featuring “decider” voters from six swing-states.
Voters have expressed similar sentiments before, with a 2022 Fox News poll showing 46% of voters believed the Republican party will do a better job on the “preservation of American Democracy“, compared to 45% believing Democrats would be better.
“Americans know that Joe Biden is the true threat to democracy, as he continues to allow a mass illegal invasion of our borders, his weakness is leading our country straight into World War III, and he weaponizes our justice system against his political opponent, President Trump. On the contrary, President Trump will secure our border and strengthen our homeland security, bring back peace around the world, and restore our justice system so that it treats all Americans equally under the law,” Trump campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
We will never walk away from the sacred cause of democracy. pic.twitter.com/BoGflKQZWm
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 14, 2024
The Biden campaign has been persistent in painting Trump as a threat to democracy leading up to the 2024 election. In a January speech, Biden criticized Trump’s alleged “assault on democracy” and claimed his response to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots were “among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history,” according to NBC.
“I‘ll say what Donald Trump won’t: Political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States. It has no place in our democracy,” Biden said.
During the 2024 State of the Union Address, Biden took aim at Trump over Jan. 6, again, saying that “The insurrectionists were not patriots. My predecessor — and some of you here — seek to bury the truth about Jan. 6. I will not do that.”
Trump also polled ahead of Biden when it came to voter’s trust on handling a variety of issues, including the economy, immigration and crime. Biden was favored to handle issues including racism, abortion and climate change
The poll sampled between 2,158-2,159 voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with a 2.6% margin for error on questions pertaining to the economy and immigration, with other questions sampling between
