After President Biden’s alarming debate performance, 72 percent of American voters believe the president does not have the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, according to a new CBS poll.
That’s up from 65 percent of voters who said the same just weeks earlier, in a June 9 poll. That same poll found 35 percent of voters said Biden is mentally fit to serve as president, while just 27 percent of voters said the same in the more recent poll.
Meanwhile, 72 percent of voters say Biden should not be running for president, an increase of 9 percentage points from February. Just 28 percent now say Biden should be running, marking a drop of 9 percentage points since February.
However, a slight majority of Democrats (54 percent) still believe Biden should in fact be running for president — a 10-point drop from February. Forty-six percent say he should not.
Fifty-five percent of Democratic voters say Biden should continue running, while 45 percent say he should step aside.
And while 71 percent of Democratic voters believed Biden had the mental and cognitive health to serve as president early this month, post-debate that figure dropped to 59 percent.
Biden’s debate performance was widely viewed unfavorably, with just 18 percent of voters saying Biden inspired confidence, compared to 44 percent who said the same of former president Donald Trump. Just 21 percent of voters said Biden presented his ideas clearly, while 47 percent said the same of Trump.
The poll was conducted June 28 and 29 among a sample of 1,130 registered voters in the U.S. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 points.
Biden’s appearance at the debate, where he struggled to form coherent sentences and at times wore a confused expression on his face, has led the editorial boards of both the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to call on the president to drop out of the race.
But many Democratic lawmakers have come to Biden’s defense, including Representative Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.) and Senator Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.), who both said Sunday that Biden should remain in the race.
Clyburn dismissed his disastrous debate performance as a consequence of “preparation overload.”
Asked during an appearance on CNN what he would tell Democratic and independent voters who were concerned by Biden’s debate performance last week, Clyburn said, “Take into account the record.”
“Yes, it was a bad performance,” he said. “I’ve been around these things. I’ve been a part of debate preparations before and I know when I see what I call ‘preparation overload’ and that’s exactly what was going on the other night. I saw Joe Biden grabbing for words and phrases and even numbers that he was loaded up with.”
Biden, for his part, tried to play down his poor debate showing at the rally in North Carolina on Friday. “I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he said, as his supporters cheered.
“I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. I know, like millions of Americans, when you get knocked down, you get back up,” Biden added.