Biden Leads Trump by 14 Points in New Poll Amid Widely Criticized Response to COVID-19 and Protests

Though we all should have learned our lesson about relying on polls by now, it's hard to ignore the dramatic lead Biden has taken in recent days.

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Attempting to stack up political confidence ahead of an election by touting polls is, as recent history has made quite clear, not a good idea.

Still, it's hard not to at least pay a bit of attention to a fresh poll from the New York Times and Sienna College in which Joe Biden takes 50 percent and Donald "Empty Arena" Trump takes 36 percent. And as the Times' Nate Cohn explained when adding some context to the poll in a series of tweets on Wednesday, he spent time earlier this week—merely out of "academic curiosity"—attempting to find any "serious choices" with regards to weighting or design that could have given Trump a more flattering outcome.

"And I've got nothing," Cohn said.

We could go deep on the numbers here, but bottom line is that the votes just weren't there for Trump. That could change, but you can't weight or LV screen your way out of being barely ahead among white voters and down 20 with independents or whatever

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) June 24, 2020

Add to this paltry showing a batch of national poll averages compiled by Vox, and you can see why even a few GOP imbeciles are stepping up to say that Trump could use a change in message—which, um, no fucking shit—in order to fall backwards into re-election.

In the Times poll, Biden shows a significant lead among "women and nonwhite voters and has made inroads with some traditionally Republican-leaning groups." The accompanying report points out issues including the administration's preposterously awful COVID-19 handling and the POTUS' equally awful response to the nationwide protests spurred by the murder of George Floyd.

Trump's recent activity, some of which has been met with the attachment of warning messages to his tweets by the Twitter team, includes threatening protesters and sharing bizarrely doctored footage.

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