Poll: Joe Biden would beat Trump if the 2020 election were held today

If Vice President Joe Biden ran against President Trump today, the odds are that he’d win, according to a new poll.

In a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted from November 9 to 11, 46 percent of voters said they would vote for Biden in 2020, as opposed to 35 percent of voters who said they’d vote for President Trump. Biden’s 11-point margin against Trump is considerable, and it comes at a time when the former vice president is generating a lot of buzz around a possible presidential campaign.

Biden, who will turn 78 a few weeks after Election Day 2020, has run for president twice. He isn’t ruling out a possible third run, telling NBC’s Today, “I’m not closing the door.”

Independent voters also favored Biden, with 41 percent saying they would vote for the former vice president and just 26 percent saying they’d vote for Trump.

But the Politico/Morning Consult poll showed that Biden actually polled slightly worse than a generic Democratic candidate. The hypothetical poll showed a generic Democrat leading Trump 48 percent to 34 percent.

The poll surveyed 1,993 registered voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The poll is in is part a reflection of Trump’s incredibly low approval rating, which is continuing on a downward trend. The president’s most recent approval rating dipped to 35 percent, with 58 percent of Americans saying they don’t approve of the job he’s doing as president, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday. That’s a 3-point drop since last month.

In recent days, Biden has also expressed regret at his decision not to run in 2016, given the outcome of the election as he’s promoted his newly released book, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose. The book, about the year Biden’s son Beau Biden died of brain cancer, reveals how close Biden came to seeking the 2016 Democratic nomination for president.

In it, Biden writes about how he was assembling staff in key primary states and mapping out fundraising strategies, but ultimately decided not to run after his son’s death. He recalls that Beau actively encouraged him to run, but he was afraid his son’s death would be politicized during a grueling primary campaign.