So how goes the Joe Biden Victory Tour these days?

I originally had the new Associated Press/NORC poll results in the Headlines, but this deserves more commentary as we head into Night Three of the Republican National Convention. The poll results appear to be driving a new media narrative that has coalesced with a Democrat establishment mutiny, all intended for the same objective -- for Biden to surrender his nomination.

First, the poll results show Biden's attempts to instill confidence in his competence failing miserably. In fact, majorities of all respondents want both Biden and Trump to withdraw, not terribly surprising given the unpopularity of this rematch from 2020. The difference, however, is that only 26% of Republicans want Trump to withdraw, and a slight majority of independents agree (51%). 

Now take a look at Biden's numbers, where purple represents the "withdraw" faction:

Yeesh. Trump retains support for staying in the race from 73% of his own voters and 44% of indies; Biden's best support only gets him to 35%. Only 28% of the overall electorate believes he should remain in the race in a poll taken two weeks after the presidential debate and with Biden's attempts to reverse its political effects well under way. 

The news gets worse in the demos, if one can believe it gets worse. The only demo supporting Biden's decision to remain in the race is black voters, and that split is almost even at 50/49. Seventy-five percent of Democrat voters below the age of 45 want Biden to quit, and 57% of those older than 45 agree with the youngsters. Only 33% of Hispanic Democrats want Biden to remain as the nominee, essentially tied with the 32% of white Dems who want Biden in the race. 

The poll offers more subsets of data, none of them good for Biden, but two others are worth noting. Neither candidate thrills the general electorate, but Trump outperforms Biden by ten points on satisfaction over their nomination, 32/22. (Majorities are dissatisfied with both, but Biden is five points worse than Trump, 62/57.) More ominously, though, Democrat dissatisfaction has grown significantly since the last time the question was asked before the debate. In the June 20-24 poll, Biden eked out a 42/38 satisfaction result. Now it's 37/48 as of the end of last week.

That is not a vote of confidence in Biden's competency, either as a competitor or as an actual office holder. 

No one can be surprised by these results, but the media is at least very interested in them. Within a couple of hours, the media narratives began emerging. 

The Associated Press itself, understandably interested in its own survey:

The findings underscore the challenges the 81-year-old president faces as he tries to silence calls from within his own party to leave the race and tries to convince Democrats that he’s the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump. The poll was conducted mostly before Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. It’s unclear whether the shooting influenced people’s views of Biden, but the small number of poll interviews completed after the shooting provided no early indication that his prospects improved.

Meanwhile, as Vice President Kamala Harris receives additional scrutiny amid the talk about whether Biden should bow out, the poll found that her favorability rating is similar to his — but the share of Americans who have an unfavorable opinion of her is slightly lower.

The AP also has a companion piece that came out roughly at the same time: "What would make Joe Biden drop out of the presidential race? Here are the four reasons he’s cited". That's not exactly subtle. 

The New York Times jumped in:

Nearly two-thirds of Democrats said President Biden should step aside and allow the party to select a different nominee, according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The survey also found that 70 percent of Americans, including nearly half of Democrats, said they were not confident that Mr. Biden had the mental capacity to be president. That is a marked increase since February, when only about one-third of Democrats said they were not confident in his abilities.

Downtrodden Democrats are especially concerned that Mr. Biden can no longer win the election. Just 37 percent of Democrats said they thought he could win, compared with 72 percent of Republicans who said they thought former President Donald J. Trump could win.

And the Washington Post's Aaron Blake weighed in not long afterward:

“All the data shows that the average Democrat out there who voted ... still want me to be the nominee,” Biden said. He added: “I wanted to make sure I was right — that the average voter out there still wanted Joe Biden. And I’m confident they do.”

It’s possible the poll is on outlier, given evidence on this front remains mixed. But it combines with other data to significantly undercut a key Biden argument, and it comes as there are increasingly ominous signs for Biden and his supposed mandate to continue.

The new AP-NORC poll shows that 65 percent of Democrats said that Biden “should withdraw and allow his party to select a different candidate.”

None of these are narrative journalism individually; in fact, Aaron's analysis is interesting to read, and the only one that suggests this could be an outlier, thus far anyway. But in the aggregate, it looks like a dogpile on Biden just as the Democrat Party establishment is mutinying against him. That's awfully convenient for the Dump Biden movement, and a very fast response to Biden's claim that the polling remains favorable to his candidacy. 

Keep an eye on how this plays out over the next couple of days. In the meantime, watch the GOP convention and see how Republicans are finding ways to work with their nominee.