Voters Trust Trump More on Economy and Trade, Biden Leads on Coronavirus and Race Relations, Poll Says

President Donald Trump tours a Honeywell International plant in Phoenix, Ariz., on May 5, 2020. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Likely voters trust President Donald Trump over his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, to do a good job on the economy and trade negotiations. The opposite is true on the issues of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, healthcare, and race relations, according to a late-August Epoch Times Big Data Poll. The candidates were tied on immigration and the U.S.-China relations.

More than 47 percent trusted Trump over Biden to handle the economy, while less than 39 percent trusted Biden more. Nearly 43 percent also put more trust in Trump on trade negotiations, while over 39 percent picked Biden.

Biden had a major edge on race relations (47.5-31.4), followed by handling of the virus (46.6-33.9), and healthcare (45.5-35).

Trump did substantially better in the last three days of polling after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention (RNC), where he officially obtained his party’s nomination. He improved by several points on every issue, particularly on immigration and U.S.-China relations, where he opened roughly a 9-point lead on Biden.

In the last three days, Trump earned trust over Biden of nearly 53 percent of likely voters on the economy—the only instance where either candidate captured a majority on any of the issues.

The results were highly polarized, with most Republicans and Democrats trusting more their party’s candidate on all presented issues. The weakest party affinity applied to Trump on race relations, where less than 63 percent of Republicans trusted him over Biden. Only 5.6 percent of self-identified liberals trusted Trump more on the coronavirus.

Voters appeared most jaded on race relations, where 12.7 percent trusted neither candidate, and healthcare, where 11.4 percent trusted neither. People with income over $200,000 were particularly pessimistic on these two issues on which nearly a fifth trusted neither candidate.

Overall, 44.3 percent approved of Trump’s job as the president in the part of the survey conducted during the convention from Aug. 26 to Aug. 28. The approval rose to 50.3 percent if counting only responses after the RNC.

The poll results were weighted based on gender, age, race, education, and region. The partisan affiliation breakdown was 36 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican, and 32 percent independent/other, mirroring the Aristotle national voter file database.

The Epoch Times National Poll was conducted by Big Data Poll and interviewed 2,169 likely voters nationwide sourced via voter file-verified online survey panels from Aug. 26 to Aug. 30, 2020. The sampling error is plus or minus 2.1 percent at a 95 percent confidence interval projecting the electorate at 145 million.

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Read: Full Survey Results (pdf)