Fourteen percent of voters say they dislike both of the leading candidates for president, according to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, more than four times the number who were dissatisfied with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump last Election Day.
Biden has a slight lead over Trump, his predecessor and current frontrunner for the Republican nomination, with 49 percent of registered voters saying they’d choose the incumbent and 47 percent siding with Trump, according to the latest poll. Independents favor Trump by an 8-point margin. The race remains virtually unchanged from August and is inside the poll’s margin of error.
While both candidates have a commanding lead with their respective partisan voters, 51 percent of voters in this poll have a negative impression of Biden and 56 percent dislike Trump.
Voters who dislike both Trump and Biden — “the double haters,” Republican strategist Whit Ayers says — “become a swing voter group” that both parties will spend significant time and money trying to win over.
WATCH: Political theorist promotes ‘Our Common Purpose’ plan to reinvent American democracy
These voters are more likely to back Trump by a two-to-one margin in the latest poll. Fifty-four percent say they’d back Trump if the election were held today, while 27 percent say they’d choose Biden and 19 percent remain undecided.
That is in line with how voters behaved at the polls in 2020. Exit polling shows that 3 percent of voters said they were dissatisfied with both candidates, and of those 52 percent voted for Trump and 35 for Biden.
In 2016, that share was 18 percent, with 47 percent going for Trump and 30 for Clinton.
When given the option of choosing a generic candidate who is not Trump or Biden, 17 percent of all voters – and more than a third of independents – said they would support a third-party nominee.
Sixty-five percent of voters do not want Biden to be president again, while 60 percent say the same of Trump.
Biden and Trump have less to worry about with their own base voters. More than three-quarters of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they would be satisfied or very satisfied if Biden wins the party’s nomination. Republicans and independents who lean that way are just as likely to say the same of Trump.
But, when it comes to those who say they’re “very satisfied” with a candidate as the nominee, Trump has a 13-point advantage among voters from his party and independents who lean that way, revealing a potential enthusiasm gap between Democratic and Republican voters that concerns Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir, who served as the campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.
“Trump will do a lot to excite and motivate Democrats, but that can’t be the only thing,” Shakir said. Biden faces different challenges as the incumbent than he did running in 2020, Shakir said, and the president will have to make “an affirmative case about what [he’s] been doing and why [he] should still remain in the job.”
Shakir also believes the active Republican primary campaign accounts for the “intensity of interest” on the GOP side, and that dynamic is likely to shift as the campaign continues. But the general dislike of both candidates will continue to shape the race, Ayres said.
“This is a politics of negative polarization where people feel greater animosity against the other side than they feel support for their own,” said Ayres, who has previously consulted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.
Several factors, like the state of the economy and Trump’s ongoing legal cases, could still shape a cliffhanger election over the next year, said Lee Miringoff, Director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.
Behind the topline numbers, Shakir sees some potential “warning signs” for the candidates with demographic groups that are key to building winning coalitions next November.
The president is significantly underperforming with non-white voters, who were key to his 2020 victory. Biden has the support of 53 percent of non-white voters in the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, which is 20 points behind his performance in the 2020 election, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 100,000 voters.
Meanwhile, Trump has support of 49 percent of white voters, 6 points less than he did in the 2020 election.
Voters under the age of 45 were also critical to Biden’s 2020 win. He led Trump by 17 points with this group in the last election, according to AP VoteCast data. But in the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, Trump now leads Biden with 50 percent of young voters compared to 47 percent for Biden, a 3-point difference that is within the poll’s margin of error.
“That’s scary and concerning,” Shakir said. “If you’re Joe Biden, if you’re any Democrat running for office, you’ve got to pull in a healthy amount of people who are young. And if you’re not, that should be of concern to you.”
WATCH: Conservative retired judge says Trump ‘corroded and corrupted American democracy’
The state of the economy, student loan debt and the high cost of housing are all concerns with younger voters that could contribute to Biden’s decline with them, according to Shakir. While the Biden administration has made so-called Bidenomics – his handling of economic issues – a focus in recent weeks, Shakir believes the president has to make a bigger effort to present a clear message about how his policies will help voters directly.
Democrats also remain worried about a possible third-party candidate, which Shakir said could be detrimental to Biden’s candidacy. He said an independent candidate would take away votes that would otherwise go to Biden and could propel Trump back to the White House with less than 50 percent of the popular vote.
The most prominent of those third-party efforts is a potential centrist ticket fielded by No Labels, a group backed by Biden’s former Senate colleague Joe Lieberman and other high-profile politicians.
“There’s no reason to do that. Now, it’s going to help the other guy,” Biden said in an interview with ProPublica on Sunday. “That’s a political decision he’s making that I obviously think is a mistake.”
The new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll suggests Democrats may be right to worry about the impact of a strong third-party candidate.
In such a matchup, 40 percent of voters would back Biden and 39 percent would choose Trump. The remaining support goes to the Green Party (2 percent), Libertarian Party (3 percent) or another independent or third-party (12 percent).
But name recognition still counts for a lot. The most prominent third-party candidate — professor and activist Cornel West, who is running for the Green Party nomination — is virtually unknown with the electorate. Nearly three-quarters of voters are unsure about his candidacy, which is centered on cutting back military spending, investing in social programs and fighting climate change,or don’t know who he is.
What about the other GOP candidates?
In the Republican race, Trump remains the most well-known candidate and is some 40-points ahead of his closest primary rival, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. But with three months until the Iowa caucuses, which kick off the nominating contests, the race can continue to shift, Ayres said.
“I don’t anticipate a lot of national numbers changing until people actually start voting. It’s voting that tends to change polls, not the other way around,” he said.
Seven of Trump’s challengers met for the second Republican debate last week and had spirited and often chaotic disagreements on a range of issues, including the economy, child care, immigration and even curtains.
In the latest poll, conducted in the days before and after the debate, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is the only candidate whose favorability rating has remained consistent with Republicans and Republican-leaning independents since the last survey in June.
“The two debates have elevated Nikki Haley substantially as a credible alternative candidate,” Ayres said.
Most of the other Republican candidates are viewed less favorably among likely GOP voters now than they were several months ago. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the only candidate besides Trump with a favorability rating above 50 percent, but he has seen a 9-point drop since June, according to the latest poll. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s favorability rating dropped 9 points. Former Vice President Mike Pence dropped 9 points, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dipped 7. More Republicans dislike both Pence and Christie than like them.
Four months ago, nearly six in 10 Republican voters didn’t know who first-time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was. While his name ID has risen in the latest poll, the number of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who dislike him has more than doubled, “which shows you just how grating his style is on a great many Republicans,” Ayres said.
One potential bright spot for the Republican candidates: Most voters don’t know enough about most of them to have an opinion. That gives candidates time to introduce themselves before the Iowa caucuses in January.
“From the perspective of most regular voters, the primary battle has just begun,” Ayres said.
The PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist Poll conducted a survey between Sept. 25 and Sept. 28 that polled 1,256 U.S. adults with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, 1,137 registered voters with a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points, 519 Democrats and Democratic leaning independents with a margin of error of 5.4 percentage points and 463 Republicans and Republican leaning independents with a margin of error of 5.7 percentage points.
