Biden leads Trump in first poll to address sexual assault allegation

[pnwmom]

Source: NY Times

Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s lead over President Trump is growing nationwide even though most voters are aware of a sexual assault allegation against him, according to a Monmouth University poll released Wednesday. It is the first major national survey to ask voters about the allegation by a former Senate aide against the former vice president.

All told, 50 percent of voters said they would vote for Mr. Biden in a head-to-head matchup, and 41 percent said they would vote for Mr. Trump. In an Monmouth poll in April, Mr. Biden led the president by just four percentage points; in March, he led by three. The margin of error in the new poll was plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

A large majority of voters -- 86 percent -- were aware of the allegation that Mr. Biden sexually assaulted a Senate aide, Tara Reade, in 1993. Ms. Reade says he pinned her to a wall, reached under her clothing and penetrated her with his fingers.

After Mr. Biden publicly denied Ms. Reade's accusation on Friday, Monmouth added a question to the poll already in progress, asking whether voters had heard about the allegation and whether they thought it was true.


Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/us/politics/joe-biden-tara-reade-monmouth-poll.html

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Some here were alarmed by an online Reuters poll that appeared to show the candidates neck and neck. But that poll wasn't selected from a random sample of registered voters. All I could learn about it was that the interviewees stated whether they were registered or not, and I was unable to find any information about the Reuter poll's demographics -- which makes a huge difference, given Trump's different performance among women vs. men and white voters versus P.o.C.

The bad news is that when Justin Amash was included among the choices, Biden's lead was cut from 9 points to 7 -- which means Amash could be a spoiler.

Here is a link to Monmouth University's analysis of its poll results, and more details about its survey.

https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/documents/monmouthpoll_us_050620.pdf/

[iemitsu]

1. And now tara Reade says that what happened,

that made her uncomfortable, was being asked to serve drinks.
Hardly a sexual assault.

[lagomorph777]

2. Her numerous stories are falling apart.

[honest.abe]

3. Joe has survived nicely this first round of swiftboating.

Joe’s got this!

[BlueIdaho]

4. The bad news for Trump is

The people have made up their minds about his catastrophic administration. Don’t get me wrong - I’m for Joe. But right now I think a ham sandwich could win against Shitler.

[honest.abe]

5. Perhaps but Joe's response was quick and firm.

This made it difficult for this bogus story to fester. In 2016 Hillary Clinton’s approach to the email server nonsense was mostly to ignore it thinking it wouldn’t matter in the end. I think if she had been more open and forceful things might have turned out differently.

Joe has handled this bogus scandal perfectly. Good sign for any future issues like this.

[BlueIdaho]

6. Absolutely!

Don’t get me wrong - Joe and team handled This well and the swift-boating fell apart quickly - unlike the two dozen corroborated accounts of Trump’s sexual assaults. Let’s go Joe!