Democrats feel a mix of hope and fear as Biden closes in on Trump
President Joe Biden has narrowed the gap with former President Donald Trump in recent polls but hasn’t overtaken him yet. Trump leads by a slim margin according to the RealClearPolitics average, down from earlier this year. Despite Trump’s edge in battleground states, Biden is consolidating the anti-Trump vote. Uncertainty looms over Trump’s legal challenges and fundraising efforts. President Joe Biden has made significant strides in narrowing the gap with former President Donald Trump in recent polls. Although Trump still holds a slight lead according to RealClearPolitics averages, Biden’s consistent progress indicates a potential shift in the political landscape. This development highlights the ongoing competition between the two figures, with both facing challenges and uncertainties in their political journeys.
President Joe Biden has narrowed the gap with former President Donald Trump, nearly tying but not overtaking the Republican in the polls.
The latest RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump leading by 0.2 points, down from more than 4 at the beginning of the year. Trump led by 1 in the most recent New York Times-Siena College and Morning Consult polls. Biden’s biggest national lead is 4 points, according to Reuters-Ipsos.
Trump still leads in most of the battleground states. His national edge over Biden also improves when third-party candidates are factored into the equation. But those potential spoilers may be starting to fade.
From late March to early April, the strongest of these candidates, independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was receiving between 8% and 14% in the polls. The more recent five-way surveys by Economist-YouGov and New York Times-Siena have Kennedy at 3% and 2%, respectively.
ELECTION 2024: FOLLOW LATEST COVERAGE
Biden may be starting to consolidate the anti-Trump vote, as Hillary Clinton failed to do in 2016. The president may also be winning back progressives who were disillusioned by his performance in office now that the reality of Trump as the GOP nominee has set in. In two-way polling, Biden is starting to run ahead of his job approval ratings.
The question that keeps Democrats awake at night is this: Should they be happy they are more or less tied with Trump, or is it actually a sign of weakness that their ticket cannot convincingly surpass him? By a similar point in 2020, Biden was leading by 5.5 points in the RealClearPolitics average. At this time in 2016, Clinton was up 9.9.
Trump outperformed his poll numbers in both of those elections. Some of the fissures in the Democratic coalition that helped him win the White House are resurfacing this year. Inflation remains hot, and the international situation is unstable. Many voters have a more favorable impression of Trump’s term than Biden’s. Right now, he could win the popular vote for the first time. And he could win another term as president without doing so.
Whereas most Democrats look at Trump’s tumultuous tenure, capped by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the multiple indictments, and his subpar favorability ratings and channel the 1988 Saturday Night Live sketch in which Michael Dukakis, as played by Jon Lovitz, says of George H.W. Bush, “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.”
Nevertheless, Trump is currently on trial and facing uncertainty in the courtroom. He is lagging Biden in the fundraising race while facing legal bills the incumbent does not. Trump’s ability to expand his coalition from 2020 may depend on activating low-propensity voters that Republicans have little experience turning out, while the nominee himself has traditionally been skeptical of the most proven means for doing so, blaming them for his loss four years ago.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Trump’s last opponent for the Republican nomination, has yet to endorse him. She has continued to receive a nontrivial number of votes in primaries occurring after she dropped out. Biden’s campaign has been actively courting her voters.
The hope for Democrats would be that Biden’s modest uptick in the polls is just the beginning of a political recovery that will erase Trump’s lead entirely months out from the election. The fear will be that they have already hit Trump with everything — abortion, indictments, claims he will cut entitlement programs if returned to office, contentions he will even end democracy itself — and can’t do better than a draw nationally, a bit worse in the battleground states.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
For almost eight years, Democrats have attempted to substitute fear and loathing of Trump for enthusiasm for their own candidates. The gambit succeeded in 2020. It worked well enough in the midterm elections. But it failed when tried by Clinton and is no sure bet for Biden, who has an unpopular record of his own to defend.
Biden is in better shape than he was before the State of the Union. More improvement is probably needed, at least relative to Trump, to secure a second term.
" Conservative News Daily does not always share or support the views and opinions expressed here; they are just those of the writer."
