Former president Donald Trump took a 9-point lead over President Joe Biden in a poll released Tuesday.
Respondents in the poll from HarrisX preferred Trump over Biden by a margin of 47 percent to 38 percent in a matchup between the two, with 15 percent saying they did not know. When pollsters added third-party candidates, Trump's lead shrank to 8 points, and 11 percent said they did not know.
The poll also found that 39 percent of respondents approved of the job Biden is doing in office, while 56 percent disapproved.
Researchers conducted the poll between Feb. 12 and Feb. 16. It queried 3,024 registered voters and carried a margin of error of 1.8 percent. Thirty-seven percent of those in the sample were Republicans, while 34 percent were Democrats, and 25 percent were independents.
HarrisX polled their participants after a week that may have exacerbated voters' concerns about Biden's mental fitness. Between Feb. 4 and Feb. 8, Biden confused the names of multiple world leaders, three times saying he went to a meeting in 2021 where he met with people who died years earlier. The centerpiece of that week's news cycle, however, was the release of a special counsel report that said Biden could not remember when his time as vice president began and ended—nor when his son, Beau, died—in an Oct. 8 interview with investigators.
Tuesday's poll is not the first poor showing for Biden. In the RealClearPolitics polling average, Trump has maintained a consistent lead over the incumbent since at least late October. That lead was over 4 points in late January, but it has since tightened to 1.6 points.