With the 2024 election one year away, The New York Times/Siena College polls released Sunday combined with surveys from two other organizations showed a consistent picture: a deeply unhappy electorate dissatisfied with both of its main options and offering warning signs for President Biden.
The Times/Siena polls and a poll from CBS News included questions asking voters whether they would vote for Mr. Biden or his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, if the election were held now. They found Mr. Trump ahead: in five out of six key battleground states in the Times/Siena poll, 48 to 44 percent on average, and nationally in the CBS News poll, 51 to 48 percent.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll also released on Sunday did not include a direct matchup but showed that 76 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, which is generally a bad sign for the incumbent. It also found — along with the Times/Siena survey — that the economy and inflation were the most important issues for voters, and that voters trusted Republicans more on those issues.
The CBS News poll phrased the question differently but found similarly that more voters believed they would be financially better off if Mr. Trump won next year than if Mr. Biden won.
The ABC News/Ipsos poll did contain one bit of marginally good news for Mr. Biden: Though its respondents largely disliked him, they disliked Mr. Trump more. It found that 33 percent of voters viewed Mr. Biden favorably, and 50 percent viewed him unfavorably; by comparison, 29 percent viewed Mr. Trump favorably, and 60 percent viewed him unfavorably.
Abortion remained an area of strength for Democrats in all three polls, with voters saying they trust Mr. Biden or Democrats in general to handle it better than Mr. Trump or Republicans in general, depending on how the poll worded the question.
How voters who prefer Mr. Biden on abortion but Mr. Trump on the economy will weigh those competing inclinations remains to be seen. The Times/Siena and ABC News polls both found that voters saw economic issues as most important. But support for abortion rights fueled Democratic victories in close races in the midterm elections last year, and it has continued to reshape elections since then.
