A majority of swing state voters say they trust former President Donald Trump to handle threats to democracy over President Biden, according to a poll released Thursday suggesting that the cornerstone message of the Biden campaign isn’t resonating with Americans.

In the six battleground states Mr. Biden narrowly won in 2020, 44% say Mr. Trump will do a better job handling threats to democracy in the U.S., compared to 33% who said Mr. Biden would do a better job, according to a poll by The Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

The same poll found that 16% of swing state voters think neither candidate is equipped to handle threats to democracy, and 7% said both candidates are equally prepared to deal with threats.

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Mr. Trump leads among so-called “deciders,” voters who fit into one or more categories such as voting in only one of the past two presidential elections, between 18 and 25, registered to vote since 2022, not sure if they will vote for Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden this year, or switched this support between 2016 and 2020.

Nearly 40% of “deciders” say they trust Mr. Trump more to handle threats to democracy while 29% say they have more trust in Mr. Biden. More than 20% of deciders say they don’t trust either to handle threats to democracy while 10% say they are both equally prepared to deal with threats.

The poll surveyed 3,513 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in April and May. Of those surveyed, 2,255 were classified as “deciders.”

The results are disappointing for Mr. Biden, who has argued that Mr. Trump and his allies would dismantle democracy as the central theme of his reelection campaign. 

In a series of speeches, Mr. Biden has apocalyptically warned that Mr. Trump and his followers would end democracy if he wins the election. The source of such concern, Mr. Biden says, is Mr. Trump’s insistence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, which culminated in violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the building.

Mr. Biden also has accused his predecessor of embracing authoritarian language, including Mr. Trump’s quip that he would only be a dictator on “Day One,” which Mr. Trump said was a jest when he was asked in a TV interview about being a dictator.

At a recent fundraiser, Mr. Biden mentioned Mr. Trump 17 times, “freedom” eight times and “democracy” four times. He mentioned the economy only twice and inflation three times. 

Mr. Trump has sought to flip the script by arguing that Mr. Biden is destroying democracy because he has weaponized the Justice Department against his political rival — namely, Mr. Trump.

The former president last month was convicted in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records and is under investigation in two federal criminal cases as well as a state case in Georgia.