Imran Yaqub Dhillon
New York
Democratic candidate Joe Biden reached his widest lead in a month in the US presidential race, after President Donald Trump tested positive for the Coronavirus. A majority of Americans think Trump could have avoided the infection if he had taken the virus more seriously, according to a UK based news agency Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday.
The Oct 2-3 national opinion poll gave little indication of an outpouring of support for the president beyond Trump’s core group of followers, some of whom have gathered outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where the president has been hospitalised.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed the severity of the pandemic as something that would disappear on its own, chiding Biden as recently as last week for wearing a protective mask, even as the coronavirus infected millions of people and forced businesses and schools to close.
Among those adults who are expected to cast ballots in the Nov 3 election, the poll found that 51% were backing Biden, while 41% said they were voting for Trump. Another 4% were choosing a third-party candidate and another 4% said they were undecided.
Biden’s 10-point edge over Trump is 1 to 2 points higher than leads Biden posted over the past several weeks, though the increase is still within the poll’s precision limits of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
With about a month to go before the election, Biden has maintained an early advantage in securing the national popular vote. But to win the presidency, a candidate must prevail in enough states to win the Electoral College, and state polls show that Trump is nearly as popular as Biden in battleground states.
Trump, 74, was transferred to Walter Reed on Friday, hours after tweeting that he was diagnosed with Covid-19..
