New polls show that a majority of Americans say Joe Biden is more capable than President Donald Trump of addressing crime and violence at protests. A survey published by ABC News on Friday conducted with Ipsos asked Americans who they thought would do a better job reducing violence and keeping the country safe. Biden was preferred by double-digit margins, the Washington Post reports. Fox News released polls centered on three swing states. Asked who would do a better job on “policing and criminal justice,” likely voters in Arizona and Wisconsin preferred Biden by five percentage points. In North Carolina, the candidates were essentially tied. Biden was preferred on the issue in Wisconsin even after Trump focused on unrest in Kenosha. A national poll from Quinnipiac University asked people how safe they felt with Trump as president or how safe they expected to feel should Biden win. By a 15-point margin, Americans said that they felt less safe in a Trump presidency. Predictions of how people would feel under Biden were evenly split. When asked about how the candidates were responding to the protests, respondents preferred Biden by wider margins.
The ABC-Ipsos poll found that about half of respondents believed that Biden’s rhetoric wasn’t having much effect, while more than half said that Trump’s was making things worse. A CBS-SSRS poll released Friday found that more than half the country viewed Trump’s rhetoric as being more harmful than helpful, though the percentage critical of Trump’s response had fallen since June. All post-convention polling on crime points in the same direction: Even after weeks of focus from Trump, he hasn’t gained an advantage on the issue over Biden. It’s likely that Trump’s dark warnings about Biden were focused at his own base to keep his likely voters committed to turning out.