Trump trails Biden, Warren, Sanders, Harris, Buttigieg by double-digit margins in new poll

William Cummings | USA TODAY

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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump loses in a hypothetical matchup with all the leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday.

Trump – who has a job approval rating 20 percentage points lower than his disapproval rating of 58% – trails by sizable margins against former Vice President Joe Biden (56%-39%); Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (54%-39%); Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont (56%-39%); South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (52%-41%); and Sen. Kamala Harris of California (52%-41%).

Each of those Democratic candidates performed well against Trump in a Post-ABC poll Sept. 5, and all of them expanded those leads in this week's survey.

Experts said a national poll more than a year away from the general election is not necessarily the best predictor of Trump's reelection chances.

Morgan State University journalism professor Jason Johnson said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the poll was an outlier relative to other surveys that have looked at head-to-head matchups and that "the real numbers that are the best indicators of what will happen in 2020" won't start coming out until after the holiday season.

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"The top four or five candidates probably do lead Trump, and they probably do lead the president in a lot of swing states," Johnson said. "But I don't think anyone in our current political environment is going to beat the incumbent president by 10, 12 points."

MSNBC analyst John Heilemann said there "literally is almost nothing more meaningless right now than head-to-head polls that are national more than a year out from the election."

"It's a terrible mistake for Democrats to look at these national numbers and get overconfident," he said, pointing to how competitive the race is in the battleground states that will determine who wins in the Electoral College.

A recent poll from The New York Times and Siena College found Trump narrowly leading Warren and Sanders among likely voters in most of the tossup states that will be critical to the election outcome. Out of the six states in the poll, Trump led Biden only in North Carolina, but he was within the margin of error in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and Arizona.

More: Biden leads Trump in battleground states, but Warren does not, poll finds

According to the Post-ABC poll, most Americans share negative opinions of Trump in a number of areas. Sixty-three percent say they don't think the president is "honest and trustworthy," 62% say he lacks presidential temperament, 60% say he does not understand their problems, 55% say he is not good at making political deals and 54% say he is not a strong leader.

Fifty-four percent say the United States is less respected around the world as a result of the Trump administration's policies. Half of Americans say Trump uses the office of the presidency to boost profits at his hotels and golf courses, and 46% say that is unacceptable.

Forty-nine percent favor impeaching Trump and removing him from office, and 47% are opposed. In contrast, Post-ABC polls found support for President Bill Clinton's impeachment at 27% to 41% in 1998.

Trump is accused of using the power of the presidency to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden and of using his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to help apply that pressure. Sixty percent of respondents say it was inappropriate for Trump to involve Giuliani in U.S. foreign policy, and 55% say Trump did something wrong – though 8% say they don't think it was a serious matter.

Slightly more than two-thirds of Republican-leaning voters want to see Trump as their party's nominee in 2020, and 30% say they would prefer someone else.

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Biden leads the Democratic field with 27%, followed by Warren at 21%, Sanders at 19% and Buttigieg at 7%. Harris is tied at 2% with Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

When asked who has the best chance of beating Trump in November, 42% of Democratic-leaning voters say Biden, 17% say Warren and 16% say Sanders.

The poll was conducted Oct. 27-30 using a random sample of 1,003 adults, and it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5%.

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