Half of Voters Say They're Better Off Now Than in 2016, Before Trump Took Office: Poll
A majority of American voters said they are personally better off now than they were 2016, the last time a presidential election was held and before Donald Trump took office.
A new national poll from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found that half of voters said their families are better off now than they were four years ago—compared with 34 percent who said their families are worse off, and 14 percent who said about the same.
Trump was a huge factor for why participants said their families are doing better or worse than four years ago.
Ninety percent of voters blamed the president for being the reason their families are doing worse, while 82 percent of voters cited him for why their families are better off.
The pollsters also surveyed voters on whether they thought their families were better or worse off at the end of a presidential term back in the fall 1992 — the last time an incumbent president lost a re-election bid. Before Bill Clinton defeated President George H.W. Bush, more voters said their families were worse off compared to four years ago. Forty percent said their families were worse off, 37 percent said their families were better off, and 21 percent said about the same.
Although half of voters said their personal lives are better now than before Trump was elected president in 2016, the majority of voters think the nation as a whole is worse off than it was when Barack Obama was president.
About 6 in 10 voters said that the country is on the wrong track and worse off than it was in 2016. More than half of voters disapprove of Trump.
The poll, conducted after Trump returned to the White House after his COVID-19 hospitalization, shows Biden with a double-digit lead over the president: 53 percent to 42 percent.
However, most voters thinks that it would be a bad thing if one party were to control the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House at the same time— regardless if it is by Republicans or Democrats.
The top issue for voters in the upcoming election is the economy, a subject that Trump has had relatively strong approval ratings on. Almost half of participants said the economy would be the most important issue when casting their ballots this year — an issue the majority of voters say the Republican Party would do a better job of dealing with.
However, the second top issue is the coronavirus pandemic, of which the majority of voters say the Democrat Party would do a better job of handling.
Most voters also disapprove of Trump's response to the pandemic, with more than half saying that Trump did not take the threat seriously enough at the beginning of the pandemic and is still not handling the health crisis well.
