The 2020 Democratic National Convention, which was held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic, solidified Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s favorability ratings and didn’t budge his national lead over President Donald Trump.
In the latest Yahoo News/YouGov Poll, YouGov recontacted respondents who participated in the previous week’s pre-convention poll to measure the impact of the DNC. The poll shows that Biden firmed up his favorably rating among registered voters (49% to 52%) but did not make a significant dent in the number of voters who went into the convention with a negative impression of him (47% to 46%).
The survey shows that Biden did not receive a major post-convention bump, meaning there no change in voting intention after Biden formally accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination, according to the Yahoo News/YouGov Poll. Biden kept his 11-point national lead over Trump in a trial heat match-up — before the DNC, Biden led 49 percent to 38 percent. After the convention, Biden leads 50 percent to 39 percent.
Biden also marginally increased enthusiasm for his candidacy among those who were recontacted. The percentage of Biden voters who said that their votes would be cast for Joe Biden rather than against Trump rose from 51 percent before the convention to 54 percent after the convention.
The virtual Democratic National Convention was the first of its kind — and it turns out most viewers saw it as a success. A plurality of viewers (46%) preferred the virtual style over the traditional, in-person format. The event was particularly well-received by Democrats, who were three times as likely to say the virtual format was better (53%) than the in-person version (17%).
See the toplines and crosstabs from this week’s Yahoo News/YouGov Poll
Methodology: The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,145 U.S. adult residents interviewed online Aug. 21-23, 2020. The respondents all participated in a prior Yahoo News survey conducted Aug. 14-15, 2020, and were contacted to participate. Of the 1,529 adults in the Aug. 14-15 survey, 1,145 responded to this survey — a recontact rate of 74.9 percent. Respondents were re-interviewed from the previous nationally representative survey. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, geographic region, news interest, 2016 presidential vote and registration status, and baseline vote intention of the first wave. The margin of error is approximately 4 percent.
Image: Getty
