A majority of likely U.S. voters think the news media is going easy on President Joe Biden and is “less aggressive in questioning Biden than they were in questioning former President Donald Trump,” a new Rasmussen Reports poll found.
Out of 1,000 likely U.S. voters polled between February 16 and 19-20, 51 percent say corporate media are less aggressive toward Biden. Only 24 percent believe the media question Biden more aggressively than they questioned Trump, and 21 percent think the treatment is roughly the same. The margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points at the 95 percent level of confidence.
Overall, 56 percent of likely voters say media bias is getting worse, and only 16 percent say the problem is getting better. Broken down by political affiliation, 30 percent of Democrats think news media bias is getting better — 10 percent of Republicans and six percent of unaffiliated voters share that opinion. In contrast, 73 percent of GOP voters think media bias is worse, as do 38 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of unaffiliated voters, the survey found.
Republicans (71 percent) and unaffiliated voters (51 percent) are more likely than Democrats (33 percent) to believe the news media is less aggressive with Biden than Trump.
“Thirty-two percent (32 percent) of Democrats believe the media questions Biden more aggressively, but only 19 percent of Republicans and 21 percent of unaffiliated voters agree,” according to the poll report.
By age, voters under 40 are less likely to believe the news media has a bias problem compared to older voters. Younger voters are also more likely to believe the media is aggressive in questioning Biden. Voters earning more than $200,000 a year are also more likely to think media bias is improving.
“Those with annual incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 are most likely to think the media are less aggressive in questioning Biden, compared to how they treated Trump,” the poll found.
Unsurprisingly, Biden’s strongest supporters “are most convinced that the news media are treating him worse than Trump,” according to the poll report. Forty-two percent of voters who “strongly approve” of Biden’s job performance say the media are more aggressive with him than Trump.
“By contrast, among those who Strongly Disapprove of Biden’s performance, 86 percent think the media questions Biden less aggressively than they questioned Trump,” the report states.