When Bill Clinton and Barack Obama joined Joe Biden on stage in New York last week they agreed that voters had a clear decision to make in November’s election.
‘I think our democracy is at stake,’ said Biden at the fundraising event. ‘Not a joke. I think democracy is literally at stake.’
But an exclusive DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners poll shows that his campaign still has work to do if that is going to be a winning message.
Voters are more likely to say they remember a better economy during Donald Trump’s four years in office than the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol or four years of political drama.
Of 1005 likely voters, some 30 percent said they thought first of ‘a better economic situation’. In contrast, 20 percent said their main memory was Jan. 6.
J.L. Partners asked 1005 likely voters for their main memories of the Trump administration
A strong economy was the top response, cited by 30 percent of respondents, beating out the Jan. 6 attack, the pandemic response and other examples of chaos under Donald Trump
Democratic strategists said there was still seven months until the election and there was plenty of time for the Biden campaign to sharpen its messaging and refocus perceptions.
And a Biden campaign insider said a plurality of voters seemed to remember negative things about Trump’s time in office, even if a healthy economy came top.
Even so the results also show that the upheaval of street protests and Trump’s erratic handling of the coronavirus pandemic have faded from immediate memory.
Overall, 45 percent of respondents say their life was better under Trump, compared with 38 percent under Biden.
Although the numbers split along partisan political lines, they are reflected among independents, who may include the swing votes that will determine the outcome of the election.
The result is that Trump holds a four-point lead over Biden when respondents were asked who they would vote for if the election were tomorrow.
James Johnson, cofounder of J.L. Partners which conducted the poll, said Trump was winning the battle of memory.
With voters’ present worries about economic pressures it was perhaps not surprising that they underestimate the political drama of the Trump years and focus on a time before the pandemic when they had money to spend.
Voters have a rosy view of life under Trump. In our survey, some 45 percent said life was better then than under the Biden administration now
When Biden took the stage with former Presidents Barack Obama (left) and Bill Clinton (right) they issued a joint declaration that democracy was at stake in the 2024 election
Independents were more divided that the overall population, with almost a quarter saying their number-one memory was the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol
‘But it is worth noting that can change,’ he said.
‘The first presidential debate in 2020 mattered, as it showed voters all of the things they saw as the worst side of Trump—aggressive, rude, prone to drama and chaos.
‘It is not implausible that the campaign—or Biden’s ads—could remind voters of this.
‘Trump may have won the battle on memory for now, but it is a war that lasts all the way up to election day and is a key metric we will be tracking.’
The results skew along party political lines.
Democrats remember first the Jan. 6 attack (34 percent), followed by political drama (17 percent) and investigations into Trump (13 percent). Only six percent cited a better economic situation.
Republicans overwhelmingly (56 percent) first say they remember a booming economy.
Independents split the difference. The economy comes top (28 percent) but is more closely followed by Jan. 6 (22 percent).
WASHINGTON DC: Protesters dressed in black, carrying umbrellas and holding signs marched through the streets of Washington in the early hours of Wednesday morning after three arrests were made in the Capitol on election night
Flashback to June 2020 when Trump walked from the White House to St John’s Church which had been damaged by fires. Earlier he promised a forceful response to violent protests
J.L. Partners polled 1000 likely voters from March 20 to 24 via landline, cellphone, SMS and apps. The results carry a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent
Yet Biden has struggled with efforts to talk up his economic wins. His team has quietly shelved talk of ‘Bidenomics’ after voters struggled to make sense of their claims that inflation had fallen when their routine grocery shopping was still more expensive than under Trump.
The president used his recent State of the Union address, his biggest set piece speech of the year, to deliver a familiar message about democracy and the threat of an unnamed Trump.
‘Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today,’ he told a joint session of Congress.
But he also took the time to explain how Americans would start to see improvements in their finances.
‘I know the cost of housing is so important to you,’ he said.
‘If inflation keeps coming down mortgage rates will come down as well.’
Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins said there was time to change things around. Voters, he added, often took a rose-tinted view of presidents once they had left office.
‘I think as Democrats have the opportunity to remind Americans what the Trump administration looked like, the chaos that was his administration, the stability that we’ve seen now, both in the global economy and in our democracy, I think that’s really the message that’s going to resonate with voters,’ he said.
‘Democrats understand that this is a long game. A lot of the messaging will be a reminder of what things looked like.’
The Trump campaign and the Biden campaign declined to comment.