Via Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-06/trump-fails-to-stir-a-sympathy-bump-as-biden-s-poll-lead-widens)…
Voters appear to be unmoved by President Donald Trump’s bout with Covid-19, with early polls showing no “sympathy boost” for the ailing president amid poor reviews for his debate performance last week.
Instead, Democrat Joe Biden is surging in national polls and now has his biggest lead since late July.
It can generally take a week for major developments in the race to be reflected in the polls, but early evidence is that voters are largely unsympathetic to Trump’s illness.
Two-thirds of likely voters in a Reuters/Ipsos poll said Trump wouldn’t have been infected with the coronavirus if he had taken the disease more seriously — numbers all the more lopsided considering that 9% are skeptical he ever had the virus at all.
Biden now leads by 9.1 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls — a lead 3 points larger than Hillary Clinton had at the same point in 2016. Biden also remains above 50%, giving Trump little opportunity to change the race by winning over undecided voters.
A CNN poll released Tuesday suggests last week’s debate might have been pivotal. By 57% to 26%, registered voters who watched it said Biden did a better job than Trump.
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