The presidential race between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden has tightened after the close of the Republican National Convention. After leading Trump by a comfortable margin in Yahoo News/YouGov Polls, Biden’s lead has slipped to six points nationally (47% vs 41%).
In the latest Yahoo News/YouGov Poll, YouGov recontacted respondents who participated in Yahoo News-YouGov on July 31 to measure the impact of the 2020 Republican National Convention.
The data indicates there are very few voters left for either political party to persuade. Most registered voters have made up their mind on which candidate to support. Nearly all (96%) registered voters who select either Biden or Trump in a trial heat say that their mind is made up — an increase of 2 percent from when the same voters were polled in late July. Just one in twelve (8%) registered voters say that they are undecided.
The Republican National Convention appears to have bolstered Americans perception that Trump embodies “strength” as a leadership quality. Last week, one-third (33%) of Americans said the president had strength, compared to 38 percent this week. The number of Americans who believe Trump embodies responsibility (26%), empathy (19%), and decency (18%) remained unchanged.
Despite the tightened lead after the conventions, the ongoing Republican effort to paint Biden as “a radical” appears largely unsuccessful. Just one in five (21%) Americans say Biden is a radical compared to half of Trump supporters (50%) who believe he is. A plurality of Republicans (44%) describe Biden as radical, but three in 10 (30%) say he is not. One-quarter of Republicans (25%) aren’t certain whether the former vice president is a radical.
See the toplines and crosstabs from this Yahoo News/YouGov Poll
Methodology: The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,001 U.S. adult residents interviewed online August 27-28, 2020. The respondents all participated in a prior Yahoo News survey conducted July 28-30, 2020 and were contacted to participate. Of the 1,506 adults in the July 28-30, 2020 survey, 1,001 responded to this survey – a recontact rate of 66.5%. Respondents were re-interviewed from the previous nationally representative survey. The sample was weighted 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 4.2 percent (and 4.5 percent for the sample of registered voters).
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