CNN’s Harry Enten Predicts Calls for Biden to Step Aside Will Only ‘Get Louder’ After New Poll Numbers

CNN data guru Harry Enten offered a somber prediction for President Joe Biden’s electoral fortunes as polls are starting to be released in the wake of his disastrous debate performance last week.

Biden has been facing increasing scrutiny since his debate with former President Donald Trump last Thursday, including several moments in which the 81-year-old, voice raspy from an apparent cold, struggled to find his train of thought. Recent polling showed 72% of Americans do not believe Biden has the “mental and cognitive health to be president,” and on Tuesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (R-TX) became the first sitting member of Congress to publicly call for Biden to withdraw from the race.

CNN News Central anchor Brianna Keilar mentioned a new CNN poll that showed that Trump’s six-point lead over Biden remained unchanged after the debate, but there were additional troubling signs for Biden, including 75% of Americans thinking the Democrats would have a better chance of winning with someone besides Biden were on the top of the ticket.

Biden’s approval rating had also “sunk to a new low” of “just 36%,” said Keilar before introducing Enten.

Enten began by noting that yes, this new poll showed that Trump’s lead over Biden had not increased, but when you look back at the matchup between these same two candidates four years ago, Biden was leading Trump by nine points back then.

“This is just a completely different race,” said Enten, with Trump leading “basically continuously, at least during 2024” and his lead was “holding or even getting larger.”

“The big question is, could another Democrat do better than Joe Biden against Donald Trump?” Enten continued. “And this new poll says, or at least suggests that, perhaps they could.” He then compared how Biden polled against Trump versus Vice President Kamala Harris , with Biden trailing by six points but Harris down by only two, within the margin of error so “no clear leader.”

In the context of a sitting Democratic member of Congress now calling for Biden to drop out, “I don’t think polling like this will stop those calls” for Biden to withdraw, Enten predicted. “I would only expect them to get louder.”

“Can we have any insight into why Harris is doing better than Biden?” asked Keilar.

Enten explained that partisans on each side were “overwhelmingly” supporting their candidate, with Democrats strongly behind Biden and Republicans strongly behind Trump.

“This is a fight for the center of the electorate,” said Enten. “It’s a fight for independents,” and among that cohort of voters — whom Trump won in 2016 and lost in 2020, mirroring his own electoral results — Trump leads by ten points but Harris “is actually ahead by three points” over Trump.

“She’s doing better in the center of the electorate,” he added, with the caveat that Harris is “not as well known” as either Trump or Biden, but that aspect made her a logical avatar for a generic Democratic candidate.

“At this point, looking at this data, I am not really quite sure that Democrats can do any worse than they are doing with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket,” concluded Enten. “They may in fact do better.”

Watch the clip above via CNN .