Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a Hispanic Heritage Month event, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020, at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee, Fla. Patrick Semansky/AP
Poll: Biden Leads Trump Among Federal Workforce by 28%
Six-in-10 feds say they plan to vote for the former vice president.
Joe Biden holds a commanding lead over President Trump among the federal workforce, according to a new poll, which found the former vice president leading his opponent by a whopping 28%.
Six-in-10 federal workers would vote for Biden if the election were held today, a survey conducted by the Government Business Council found, compared to just 32% for Trump. GBC is the research arm of Government Executive Media Group. Five percent plan to vote for another candidate, while 3% do not plan to vote.
Biden’s standing outpaces Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s among federal workers in the 2016 election, when the last GBC/GovExec poll before the election found the former State Department secretary led Trump 53% to 34%.
Back in December, 52% of federal employees supported impeaching Trump compared to 43% who opposed it. Overall, 37% of the federal workforce approved of the job Trump was doing, while 55% disapproved. One-in-five Republican federal workers gave Trump negative marks. Nearly half of Democrats at that time had not yet decided which candidate they would support, though Biden did lead the pack with 15% of support.
The administration's handling of the novel coronavirus has had little impact on federal employees’ decision making. Just 5% say they made a decision on who to vote for as a result of the Trump’s COVID-19 response. Nearly half of feds say the pandemic response has reinforced their decision, while 40% say they were fully decided prior to the outbreak.
Most federal workers are not particularly concerned about casting their vote given the pandemic and the mail-in ballot process, with about six-in-10 saying they are not at all or only slightly concerned. Just one-in-four are “extremely” or “very” concerned.
Still, just 7% of feds say they have no concerns at all about the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to deliver mailed ballots in a timely manner. USPS has repeatedly stated it has the operational capacity to deliver all election mail, but 53% of federal employees remain extremely or very concerned about it.
The survey was sent to a random sample of Government Executive Media Group subscribers from Sept. 9 through Sept. 15. It received responses from 1,028 federal employees and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3%. See the full results of the poll here.