The Biden campaign talks a good game about how confident they are that Ol’ Joe can win in November. For a while, it was definitely for show. Past reports indicated that Biden was privately frustrated at how poorly he was polling against Trump, though publicly, when asked, he simply told the media they were looking at the “wrong polls.” When polls started to tighten after the State of Union, Biden was reportedly ecstatic and brimming with confidence that he was on the path to victory in November.
"The turnabout in Biden’s mood has been propelled in part by recent polling that shows him gaining ground against former President Donald Trump, these people said," NBC News reported last week.
And then the bump was over, and Trump continues to lead in national and battleground state polling. In fact, it looks like Trump might be pulling away from Biden, according to syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt.
During a panel discussion with Hugh Hewitt, Francesca Chambers, and Guy Benson, Baier said that Trump is leading in most of the battleground states, and that when it comes to "who do you trust on the economy," former President Trump has an overwhelming lead in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. "And that matches other Real Clear Politics average of polls that we have seen in swing states."
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"Hugh, we are in a place where the polls seem to be helping the former president even though he's in this criminal trial," Fox News anchor Bret Baier observed.
“The former president is establishing a lead, the sort of lead if you are watching the Kentucky Derby or any of the other, Belmont Stakes, you’d be tearing up tickets if you didn’t have money on the horse named Trump,” Hewitt said. "He is pulling away. And I want to go back to the CNN poll. He is 11 points ahead of Joe Biden on voters 18 to 34. That's a crisis for him."
The CNN poll Hewitt mentioned showed Trump crushing Biden nationally 49-43 in a two-way race, and 42-33 when third-party candidates were included.
CNN conceded that "opinions about the first term of each man vying for a second four years in the White House now appear to work in Trump’s favor, with most Americans saying that, looking back, Trump’s term as president was a success, while a broad majority says Biden’s has so far been a failure."
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Hewitt's observation can actually be observed in the polls. While the RealClearPolitics average tightened in recent weeks to a 0.2-point edge to Trump, he is now pulling away with a +1.5 point spread over Biden. While this isn't his largest lead in the RCP average — that was 4.3 points back in January — it does indicate that the Biden bump has passed. Heck, even with the bump, Biden never led Trump in the RCP average. It may be too early to be sure, but Trump's pulling away in the polls could be the start of a long-term polling trend in his favor.
Similar shifts can be seen in other polls. For example, Trump's lead over Biden in the Rasmussen Reports survey has nearly doubled in the past month. In light of recent economic reports, it could grow even more.
