Poll: Debate aftermath damages Biden and Democratic Party — but one-on-one matchup with Trump is unchanged

CORRECTION (July 14, 8:46 p.m. ET): Due to an error with the original polling documents, a previous version of this article misstated the vote shares and margins for the multicandidate ballot test. Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden by 3 points in the six-way ballot test, not the other way around.

A new national NBC News poll — conducted after President Joe Biden’s bad debate performance and before a gunman fired at former President Donald Trump and rallygoers in Pennsylvania on Saturday — found thepresidential contest remaining stable and competitive, with Biden trailing former PresidentDonald Trump by 2 points in the survey.

The result was well within the poll’s margin of error and had the same margin as April’s survey.

Still, the survey showed the toll the debate and its aftermath took on the president and his party — though it's unclear how public sentiment in a shocked nation will shift in the wake of Saturday's shooting.

In the poll, more than 60% of Democrats said they wouldprefer someone else as the party’s presidential nominee. Almost 80% of all voters reportedhaving concerns about Biden’s mental and physical fitness.

And the popularity of the Democratic Party declined, matching its all-time low in the three-decade history of the NBC News poll.

Yetthe 2024 head-to-head matchup was relatively unchanged, at leastfor that moment — partly because of voter sentiment about not just Biden but also Trump. That includeda majority of voters continuing tohold negative views of the former president, whileTrump faced deficits versus Bidenon the questions oftemperament and being honest and trustworthy.

Another reason for the unchanged race is the degree to which political partisans remained locked in on