NBC poll, too: 59% of voters have “major concerns” about Biden’s mental competency

And the hits just keep a’coming’ for the man the White House media team swears can run circles around everyone. Voters see Joe Biden making circles, but are figuring out that he’s lost rather than lapping anyone. Two mainstream-media polls in a row this weekend show most voters having concerns about Joe Biden’s mental capacity, and for good reason.

First came the WaPo/ABC poll, and now NBC News’s latest poll shows 74% with moderate or major concerns about the compos mentis of the Commander in Chief:

Yet according to the poll, a combined 74% of registered voters say they have major concerns (59%) or moderate concerns (15%) that Biden, at age 80, doesn’t have the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a second term.

Consider the ramifications of that for a moment. It may well be true that to ask the question is to beg the answer a bit, but we can measure that to some degree by the same question asked about Donald Trump. Fifty-two percent of respondents in the same survey have only minor or no real concerns about his physical and mental health. For Biden, only 26% of the respondents have minor or no real concerns over Biden’s mental and physical capacity to do the job now.

Then consider what the split itself means. If we saw those numbers reversed — 15% with major concerns and 59% with moderate concerns — a show of vitality from Biden could mitigate it, and it might even be attributable to his name being mentioned in the polling question. (The Trump question included his age as well.) This may have been what the White House was trying to do earlier by featuring Biden on a bicycle, but that backfired when he fell and nearly caused a national crisis.

However, nearly six in ten respondents in the entire sample have “major concerns,” which clearly makes the worry over Biden’s failing cognitive abilities a bipartisan or non-partisan issue. NBC News doesn’t offer the crosstabs on these questions, but you don’t get to 59% with just Trump supporters in a sample where only 43% voted for him against Biden, and only 39% are either Republicans or independents leaning Republican. There are a large number of Democrats in this poll with “major concerns” about the octogenarian that can’t find his own way off a stage and who keeps repeating the same debunked personal-story lies, sometimes in the same appearance — and nearly in the same breath. Voters may have concerns about Trump, but few really doubt his mental or physical capacity.

The Biden/Trump dynamic changes when it comes to Trump’s legal issues, but it doesn’t help much when compared to Biden’s own growing potential liabilities:

According to the poll, 62% have either major concerns (52%) or moderate concerns (10%) about Trump facing different criminal and civil trials for alleged wrongdoing, including for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Another 60% have major concerns (45%) or moderate concerns (15%) about Biden’s possible awareness or involvement in the business dealings of his son, Hunter, including alleged financial wrongdoing and corruption.

On top of that, NBC also paralleled the WaPo/ABC poll in showing Biden reaching new depths for approval numbers:

Meanwhile, Biden’s job rating among registered voters stands at 41% approve and 56% disapprove — the highest disapproval rating of his presidency.

Deeper inside those numbers, Biden is underwater among voters between the ages of 18 and 34 (46% of them approve of his job performance), all women (46%), Latinos (43%) and independents (36%).

What’s more, the NBC News poll finds 37% of voters approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, and 41% approve of his handling of foreign policy.

At this point, perhaps we should note that these are two of the friendliest polls for Biden and Democrats. Only Econ/YouGov is more reliably friendly for Biden on job approval, and they are all going the wrong direction. American voters have lost confidence in Biden, a condition that started with his disgraceful abandonment of Americans to the Taliban over two years ago and has never abated since. Biden’s insistence on lecturing people about his supposedly “great” economy has only exacerbated the perception that Biden is either a complete incompetent or senile, or perhaps both.