Greg Sargent at TNR makes an important observation about why the polls remain so close:
A new Marist poll takes the novel step of asking registered voters which is more off-putting in an occupant of the Oval Office: dishonesty or excessive age. The results are surprising, and along with other polling along these lines, it should influence how Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s relative qualifications for the presidency are covered from here on out.
The poll asked: Which is more concerning in a president, someone who doesn’t tell the truth, or someone who might be too old to serve? The results were lopsided: By 68 to 32 percent, respondents were more concerned about the lying than the aging. Given the relentless media focus on presidential age of late, that’s simply remarkable.
While the poll doesn’t directly compare Trump and Biden on that particular question, it also finds that 52 percent of Americans say Biden has the “character to serve as president,” whereas only 43 percent say this about Trump. Fifty-six percent say Trump lacks the character to serve, which surely reflects public perceptions of Trump’s dishonesty.
[…]
Voters grasp Trump’s world-historical levels of dishonesty. This week’s Pew poll found that only 36 percent of voters view Trump as “honest.” By contrast, 48 percent view Biden that way—not good enough, clearly, but Biden’s large advantage here is especially notable given that as president, he has been subjected to a far harsher media spotlight for the last four years.
What the new Marist poll adds to this debate is the idea that voters see excessive lying as a serious problem in a president. Yet ask yourself this: How often is Trump’s lying covered that way? Trump’s dishonesty is rarely treated as a sign of his temperamental unfitness for the presidency. Biden’s age, of course, is constantly covered as an important factor in determining his fitness for the office. Biden’s age should be covered this way, to be clear. But so should Trump’s relentless lying.
The key distinction here is between mental unfitness for the presidency (where Biden does very badly, relative to Trump), and temperamental unfitness for that majestic office. On the latter, Quinnipiac found earlier this year Biden does significantly better than Trump does, with an extraordinary 61 percent saying Trump is temperamentally unfit for the presidency.
Temperamental unfitness also matters! And honesty is central to that.
He goes on to ask how the news media could improve its coverage of this in a way that frames it as the threat it really is, admitting that it’s not easy. News analysis that discusses this with the seriousness it deserves would be a good start. And as he says, the one thing it should stop doing, right now, is treating it as “savvy or well-executed politics.”
Note this bizarre passage from a recent Times piece:
At his marathon rallies, Mr. Trump, using a teleprompter but often going on riffs without it, speaks for upward of 90 minutes. He tells outrageous lies. He employs hateful language. He mixes up names, dates and places.
But the bombastic former president—who at 78 is three years younger than Mr. Biden and with his heavyset frame appears far more physically imposing—does it all with prodigious stamina. Polls show that voters have fewer concerns about Mr. Trump’s age than Mr. Biden’s.
Trump spews lies and hate regularly, but, hey, he does it with an effective display of performative gusto! Oh, well—it’s all just an inevitable background condition of our politics in the Trump era. But news organizations can choose to not treat Trump’s lying this way, and find a better approach. Another problem: Media fact checks are often cordoned off from other types of stories. There has to be some way to better integrate fact-checking into the daily drumbeat of news coverage.
There’s more at the link and well worth reading.
Those questions in the Marist poll caught my attention as well. I think it’s vitally important for these pollsters to start wondering why it is that despite the overwhelming concern people have over Biden’s age, he is still tied in all the polls. It seems counter intuitive. But when you look at how people feel about Orange Hitler’s character defects, it makes more sense.
Sure, everyone wishes the candidates were younger. But both of them are old and people are more concerned about Biden’s age than Trump’s for some reason. But the race remains very close and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that Donald Trump is a lying, criminal demagogue who attempted a coup which makes him completely unfit to be president again.