Shocker Poll: Swing-State Voters Trust Trump More on Democracy

Good news for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party: The swing-state voters most likely to decide the election believe that democracy is on the ballot in November. The problem: They trust Donald Trump to protect it more than Biden.

A new poll from The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government shows that the Biden campaign’s effort to frame the 2024 election as a battle between democracy and the rising tide of authoritarianism—the “most important election of our lifetime”—has been successful; 61 percent of surveyed swing-state voters described “threats to democracy” as “extremely important” to them.

But the campaign’s messaging does not seem to have translated to support for Biden. Remarkably, 44 percent of swing-state voters trust Trump to best handle those threats over Biden’s 33 percent. Among undecided voters, the numbers are just as bleak: 38 percent trust Trump and 29 percent trust Biden.

The troubling numbers come as Trump faces an election interference trial in Georgia and an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith over his involvement in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Amid his legal woes, the former president has continued to peddle lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Biden’s messaging problem is surprising. Voters appear to agree that democracy is in danger, a central theme of Biden’s stump-speech pitches and campaign ads, many of which contain footage of the mob outside the Capitol on January 6, 2021. They just don’t trust that he’s best suited to guard it. Claims made by Trump of the threat to democracy in the wake of his felony conviction in his hush-money trial may partially explain the poll’s results, as may frustration with Biden’s insistence on continuing to fund Israel’s unpopular assault on Gaza, even as he violates international and domestic weapons transfer laws to do so.

But whatever voters think threats to democracy entail—like a president sowing doubt in elections and refusing to submit to the peaceful transfer of power—Biden, who has prioritized comparatively abstract messaging on democracy at times during his reelection campaign, will need to figure out how to fully get through to voters on the issue, or change course soon.