Seven in 10 U.S. adults — including 65% of Democrats — say President Joe Biden should suspend his reelection campaign and allow the party to nominate a different candidate, according to a new poll by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 

A strong majority of voters across the political spectrum believe Biden should step aside, including 77% of independents and 73% of Republicans. Just 28% of voters and 35% of Democrats believe Biden should stay in the race, the survey found.

A sizable, but far smaller, segment of voters also believes former President Donald Trump should withdraw. Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed say he should drop out, while 41% said he should keep running. But there was a stark partisan divide on Trump, with 73% of Republicans supporting his candidacy and 86% of Democrats saying he should leave the race.

The poll was mostly conducted before the assassination attempt on Trump on Saturday. 

While about twice as many voters said they find Biden to be more honest than Trump (40% to 21%), far more of them said they think Trump is more capable of winning the election than Biden (42% to 18%). Meanwhile, they were nearly evenly split on which candidate has the right vision for the country (35% said Biden, 34% said Trump).

The survey’s findings of tepid support for Biden are nothing new. For example, last September, a CNN poll showed that 67% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters wanted the party to nominate someone else other than Biden, who faced no major challengers in the primaries.

But support for Biden appears to have eroded further following his devastating debate performance last month, in which the president struggled at times to articulate his answers.  

In an AP-NORC poll in June, 38% of Democrats said they were very or somewhat dissatisfied with Biden, 81, as the nominee. That number jumped to 48% in July.

In a February AP-NORC survey, 32% of Democrats said they were not very or not at all confident in Biden’s mental capacity to be an effective president. Today, 48% have those concerns.

Among all adults, 29% say they have confidence in Biden’s mental capacity, compared to 48% for Trump, 78.

In the first two weeks after Biden’s debate flop, a number of key Democratic figures, including 20 members of Congress, publicly called for the president to withdraw from the race. 

The furor appeared to subside after Trump was shot in the right ear during a debate last weekend but has since began to bubble up again. On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a Senate candidate, became the 21st congressional Democrat to call for Biden’s withdrawal.

This week, Democrats in Congress were circulating a letter urging the party not to hold a virtual roll call vote to nominate Biden before next month’s convention, although as of Wednesday, a source told Spectrum News that Democrats had decided against sending the letter “at this time.”

Biden has repeatedly said he does not plan to drop out of the race and has urged Democrats to end talk of the possibility.

During a news conference last week, Biden said he would not step aside unless his advisers told him “there’s no way you can win,” adding, “No one is saying that. No poll says that.”

If Biden were to exit the race, many have speculated Vice President Kamala Harris might replace him as the nominee.

According to the AP-NORC poll, Harris has a 43% favorability rating among all voters — higher than both Biden’s 38% and Trump’s 37%.

Thirty percent of voters said they think she would make a good president, including 58% of Democrats. Twenty-two percent of Democrats said they don’t believe she’d be a good president, and 20% said they don’t know enough to say. 

Among independents, 20% said they think Harris would be a good president, 39% said she would not, and 40% said they don’t know enough to weigh in.

Two other Democrats — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — have also been floated as possible replacements to Biden atop the ticket, but a majority of voters said they are not familiar with either governor enough to say whether they might be a good president.

The survey of 1,253 voters was conducted through online and telephone interviews from July 11-15. Its margin of error is +/- 3.8 percentage points.