Biden’s Attention Deficit Disorder

Biden ran for president on the promise that voters wouldn’t have to obsess daily about the chaos in Washington. But he also ran as a bridge candidate, and that was long before a post-J6 Trump candidacy loomed as a viable option.
Biden ran for president on the promise that voters wouldn’t have to obsess daily about the chaos in Washington. But he also ran as a bridge candidate, and that was long before a post-J6 Trump candidacy loomed as a viable option. Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Peter Hamby
January 22, 2024

As a new presidential campaign year begins, Donald Trump is once again saturating news cycles, with his statement win in the Iowa caucuses and cameras following him to his myriad court appearances. As he skates to the Republican nomination and prepares to face President Biden in November, Trump’s exotic attentional powers are flipping the usual challenger-incumbent dynamic on its head—American voters are currently hearing more in the news about Trump than about Biden.

That’s according to an exclusive new poll from Echelon Insights, which is partnering with Puck this year to deliver proprietary data about the 2024 presidential election. The Echelon poll surveyed 1,029 voters in the likely electorate, matched the L2 voter file, and was conducted online between January 14 and 16. It has a margin of error of ±3.4 percentage points.