See new CNN poll results after Biden-Trump debate

Joe Biden is attempting to use the monumental Supreme Court ruling on presidential power to warn about the dangers of a second Trump presidency. But in this crucial first week after the debate, the president's delivery was just as focused as his words. No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of United States. Today's Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity that fundamentally changed for all for all practical purposes. Today's decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what the president can do. This is a fundamentally new principle, and it's a dangerous precedent, because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. Of course, it all comes down to what the voters think. CNET's David Chalian is here to break it down. Show us the numbers from this new poll. Yeah, this was fielded entirely after our debate, as you noted. And I think there are some data points in here that the Biden campaign will use to try and push back on some of this Democratic concern. And I think there are some data points in here that those elected officials and donors who were concerned about Biden moving forward will use to push back on the president. Take a look overall at the state of the race. In our brand new poll, 49% Donald Trump, 43% Joe Biden. This is a six point lead, Dana, and this is unchanged, unchanged since our last poll in April. In fact, it's been a remarkably consistent race, with Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump just outside the margin of error for quite some time. If you look back in our trend here, you see it was identical in April, 4943. You see, nothing has really changed since last August by last fall. This race is kind of locked into place. That's remarkable to look at that even just from April to now. Exactly the same identical. And the Biden campaign will say to folks, see, the debate didn't change the state of the race. Of course, when you're six points down, you kind of needed that debate to change the state of the race. You were I was talking about what was locked in here. So 65% of the electorate say their mind is made up. If your mind is made up in this poll, you're splitting 53% for Trump, 45% for Biden. However, 31% of voters in the poll say they are movable. Either they don't have a first choice or they're not locked in. They're willing to move off of who they're saying their choice is. Right now, 31% of the electorate is movable. They split more evenly 39% for Trump, 37% for Biden. Obviously, Joe Biden needs to be working on this movable crowd of nearly a third of the electorate, whether those that don't have a choice or actually with Trump right now, but could move to improve his standing and talk about what is driving the voters on these numbers. This is going to be welcome news to Biden, because the race is still largely about Donald Trump as the motivating factor, right? Even after the debate. This is among Biden supporters. Dana, what would your vote be more to vote against Trump or for Biden, 63% say against Trump, 37% say for Biden. And I will say this, 37 is actually a slight improvement for Biden. We're a bit more of his voters are saying they're actually voting for him. But overall, the thrust for Biden supporters is they want to vote against Trump. not for Biden. It's the complete reversal for Trump supporters. Two thirds of Trump supporters are casting their ballot for Donald Trump. 34% say they're casting against Joe Biden. again, we see a slight uptick here for Trump among those voting for him, too. So we're seeing both Trump and Biden sort of consolidate, their fellow partizans. What about the debate performance? Let's talk about that because we really want to know what voters thought and whether the debate performance actually impacted how they perceive Joe Biden. Yeah, I mean, overall in this poll, we see that people say Donald Trump won the debate. We saw that in our instant poll on the night that the debate among debate watchers, that's true broadly with the electorate. But take a look at these numbers. And this is going to keep the conversation going. Inside the Democratic Party, nearly three fourths of American voters say someone else, not Joe Biden should give, would give Democrats their best chance if they were at the top of the ticket. Only 25% of voters say Joe Biden gives Democrats their best chance of winning in November. And take a look at these numbers. Joe Biden's approval rating is down to 36% in this poll. That is his lowest approval rating of his entire presidency in CNN polling, his lowest number nearly four months out from the election. That's not welcome news for any incumbent. And we tested what would it look like if Vice President Kamala Harris was in a matchup against Donald Trump and not Joe Biden, and the vice president actually does a little bit better against Trump than Joe Biden does. She pulls the race within margin of error. No clear leader Donald Trump at 47. Kamala Harris at 45%. We also tested, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, Gretchen Whitmer, you see here those Democrats, they kind of perform like Joe Biden. Donald Trump is beating them right now outside the margin of error. Only Kamala Harris in this poll of these Democrats tested, is getting this race within the margin of error down. All right, David, poof, I'm over here now. We'll see you here in a minute. Thank you so much for all of that. Very, very interesting. reporting from our poll. let's talk about more about all of this with my great group of reporters, The Washington Post, Yasmeen Abu Talib, CNN's Evan Weekend, and Olivia Knox of U.S. news. Again, David will be here in a moment. Olivia, I want to start with you. Your sort of takeaway from these numbers that David just revealed, we'll have two thoughts. The first is, I have not seen the Democrat Democratic Party this agitated in this much of a panic since 1998, early 1998, when the Lewinsky scandal erupted. Wow. And, and we saw prominent Democrats saying that Bill Clinton should resign. Right. that didn't happen, and Democrats did just fine in those in those midterms that year. The second thought I have is that, we really should be polling the four or so states that are actually going to decide this election, know if if 2043. Well, but if 24 goes the way 20 and 16 when we're talking about tens of thousands of voters in a handful of states. And to my theory of the case is that literally any issue can swing this election. I think that this is certainly instructive, but I think that the most telling thing will really to be continuing to talk to voters. I was in conversation with some of them this weekend. There was a rally here in DC in support of low wage workers, and I thought that there would be more pushback after the debate performance. I thought that they would raise issues with a whole number of things concerning President Biden, because this is really the left flank of the coalition. And instead, it was not exactly opposite. They really rallied around him. They said that all of the the, response was not fair. they seemed to take a really pragmatic, response to all of this and say, listen, he's ultimately going to be our nominee. The alternative is former President Trump, and we're going to stand by him through this difficult period. David, do you want to I'm going to move on to some of the things that are going on in the, in the Democratic Party with regard to the debate, but is there anything else that you really want to emphasize your big picture take away from everything you just gave us? Well, I think the biggest thing here is Joe Biden is not on track to win this race right now. And he needed a debate performance that was going to upend the trajectory of the race. That did not happen here. I mean, inside these numbers of him being six points down, from Donald Trump is that he's down ten points among independent voters. Obviously, that was not the case four years ago when he won the race nationally by four percentage points. So if this is what the result is, that would be, you know, a ten point swing in the other direction. It's notable that Kamala Harris's performance with independent voters in this poll, she's almost even with Trump. Biden's ten points down with independent voters. All right. So I mentioned I want to talk about kind of the what's going on behind the scenes, with regard to Democrats and the Biden campaign and something that went from behind the scenes to on TV this morning, which is, an interview with our colleague Kasie Hunt. Mike Quigley, the congressman said the following. His four years are, you know, one of the great presidencies of our of our lifetime. But I think he has to be honest with himself, this decision, he's going to have to make it. He clearly has to understand. I think what you're getting to hear is that his decision not only impacts who's going to serve in the white House the next four years. but who's going to serve in the Senate? Who's going to serve in the House? And it will have implications for decades to come. It's his decision. I just want him to appreciate at this time just how much it impacts not just his race, but all the other races, coming in November. Now, what's notable about that isn't what he said. It's that he said it in public. We have all talked to people who've said that and much more in private, but they have been kept at bay by the Biden campaign. He decided he wanted to say that publicly. Yeah. I mean, I think this is really what has the potential to maybe swing the conversation in a more public way from sort of pundits and columnists to more Democratic elected officials who may start to call for there to be another nominee, is, as the Biden campaign will point to polls like today's, to say it didn't change the race. I think that's a bit of a problem because, like David said, that they needed to change the dynamics of the race. Being six points down is not an especially strong argument. But if polls show that Senate candidates, House candidates are now at risk of losing their races more than they were before because they're being dragged down by Biden, and this was a concern well before the debate that a lot of people didn't want. And tough districts and tough states didn't want to campaign with Biden, didn't want to appear at events with him. If now it looks like Democrats are at a bigger risk of, not being able to flip the House, losing the Senate, then I think that could really start to change the public conversation.