Despite the contentious 2020 election, Joe Biden took office with majority approval. He was up double digits, I might add, showing that Americans clearly were willing to give him a chance to prove he was going to be the "uniter" he claimed he would be on the campaign. It helped that the media was on his side, pushing a pro-Biden narrative. It helped too that COVID cases were on the decline, and Biden was taking credit for that. His approval ratings immediately started trending downward, albeit slowly, and with his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, they hit negative territory for the first time, where they have remained ever since.
Despite his negative approval ratings, hypothetical match-up polls between him and Donald Trump have long been very competitive. The spread between them has generally been within a couple of points, with both men occasionally having a lead, and polls generally being mixed, showing one or the other ahead, and maybe a few showing a statistical tie.
But, there’s been a remarkable pro-Trump shift in the polls that has all the Biden boosters in a panic. The last ten polls tracked by RealClearPolitics have shown Trump ahead — with a lead ranging from one to six points, and a current average of +2.3 points for Trump.
A small lead for sure, but considering Trump never had a lead in the RealClearPolitics average during the 2020 cycle, and Trump outperformed the polls on Election Day, there’s ample reason to be panicking if you’re a Democrat.
"Trump’s vote share in national polls is higher than at any time in the past year,” observes Steven Shepard at Politico. "President Joe Biden’s poll numbers keep getting worse."
November started with New York Times/Siena College polls showing Trump ahead in four of the six swing states, but more indicators of Biden’s electoral peril soon followed. The president’s standing in head-to-head matchups with Trump is falling: Among the latest surveys this month from 13 separate pollsters, Biden’s position is worse than their previous polls in all but two of them.
And while polls suggest most of the movement comes from voters abandoning Biden — who might become undecided but not swing to supporting Trump — the Republican has also started to gain steam. Trump’s vote share in the national polling average is higher now than at any point in the past year.
Shepard also observes that state-level polling is just as bad for Biden. "In addition to those New York Times/Siena polls, within the last week and a half, other surveys have shown Trump ahead by 8 points in Arizona and 5 points up in Michigan.” Polls continue to show Biden losing young voters — a constituency that has long been reliable for Democrats and that Biden simply can’t afford to lose. Sure, there are some polls showing Biden, but, as Shepard notes, they’ve become the exception, not the rule. He tries hard to make excuses for Biden’s poor showing with younger voters, but you can read the panic between the lines.
Related: Biden Hasn’t Earned Reelection, and the Polls Show It
Young voters may still end up voting for Biden, or they may just sit out the election. Who knows at this point, but there are some many other factors that are looking good for Trump that no matter how you slice it. His vote share is spiking, and it’s not just Biden's bungling of the Israel-Hamas war that’s to blame.
One could argue that the election is still roughly a year away and that anything can happen. This is certainly true. But, there’s no denying that Biden’s failed presidency is weighing down his candidacy and, considering that the 2020 election came down to a few thousand votes in a few select states, Trump’s current lead in the polls tells us that this election won’t look anything like 2020 — or even 2016, when Hillary Clinton consistently lead Trump in the polls, and her chances of victory were measured at between 90 and 99%.
