No matter who wins the Republican Iowa caucuses Monday night, that candidate would beat President Joe Biden in the general election, according to the latest CBS News/YouGov poll.
Former President Donald Trump bests Biden 50% to 48%, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) beats Biden 51% to 48%, and Nikki Haley is up on Biden by 8 points, 53% to 45%.
Haley’s strength against Biden comes from stronger support among moderates and independents with college degrees. She also does better among 2020 Biden supporters than Trump or DeSantis, and she is even with Biden among women voters.
For each candidate, the economy is proving to be Biden’s biggest weakness. Of those Democrats who believe they’d be better off financially under a Republican president, many say they’d vote for a Republican.
Among all voters, 49% say a second Biden term would make them “financially worse off,” while just 21% say they would be “financially better off.” Almost a third of the public, 30%, say a second Biden term would be financially the same for them.
For Trump, those numbers are reversed. Among all voters, 49% say a second Trump term would make them “financially better off,” while just 30% say Trump would make them “financially worse off.”
CBS did not release any data on what voters think about how Biden is handling immigration, but among Republican voters, only the economy ranks as a more important topic. Almost 90% of Republican voters say they want to hear Republican candidates talk about “the economy and inflation,” followed closely by “the situation with migrants and the border” at 83%.
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The next-most important topics included “transgender issues in schools” at just 39% and “indictments against Hunter Biden” at 38%. Just 18% of Republican voters said they cared about the indictments of Trump.
Considering that inflation ticked back up in December after falling in previous months, the White House should be very concerned about how voters feel about the economy.