In? the aftermath of the special election in NY-03 this week, there was a lot of effort by the media to present the election as a bellwether for the 2024 election, as if a district that Biden won handily in 2020 (by 8 points) is a toss-up district that can somehow be a predictor of a national election. They would say that to help energize Biden's base.
The election still helped tighten the already close House of Representatives, so it's still a victory for the Democrats, even if it's one that doesn't tell us anything about the upcoming presidential election. I can understand why Democrats are trying to find a silver lining in the dark cloud that hovers over Biden's presidency and his campaign, but it's not going to change what's really going on.
In fact, famed political analyst Charlie Cook, the founder of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said this week he doesn't expect Joe Biden to win in November.
“I would be very, very surprised if President Biden won 270 electoral votes,” he said at a National Association for Business Economics conference in Washington, D.C.. After pointing out that the Electoral College determines who wins the presidency, he nevertheless said that Biden would have to win the national popular vote by four or five points if not more, to pull off an Electoral College victory. Currently, Trump leads in the RealClearPolitics average by just over a point, and that average includes last month's Quinnipiac Poll, which, as I've previously noted, has the hallmarks of being an outlier.
The best thing we can look at to assess what's going to happen in the 2024 presidential election is, perhaps unfortunately, polls. And the polls haven't looked good for Joe Biden for months. Not only does Donald Trump beat him in national match-ups, which don't really matter, but also in battleground state polling, which actually does matter.
There's polling out Thursday that tells how things are looking in the battleground states, and things are not improving for Joe Biden.
A new poll out of Michigan shows Donald Trump with a two-point edge over Joe Biden. Michigan is a key state in this election. Though traditionally a blue state, Trump narrowly won it in 2016, and Biden's victory there in 2020 was by less than three points. Biden has lost significant ground with independents and black voters in the state since 2020.
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In a match-up that includes third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein, and Cornel West, Trump's lead over Joe Biden increases to five points.
"Even though Trump is the challenger and has had to negotiate a competitive primary, he has locked down almost all Republican partisans," says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson. "The issue climate isn’t terrible for Biden here, but he has significant work to do to recover Democrats and traditionally Democratic constituencies. If he can’t improve his showing with African Americans and younger voters, he is heading toward a one-term presidency."
Meanwhile, Trump leads in five out of six battleground states based on current poll averages calculated by RealClearPolitics, which, according to RCP's Tom Bevan, is enough for Trump to secure victory.
As of right now, this translates to 293 electoral votes for Trump, 245 for Biden.....https://t.co/6PDZ6cW7kR pic.twitter.com/zww43jPvZE
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) February 15, 2024
Anything can happen, of course, but Biden's battleground state problem hasn't gotten any better.
