While the media has been pushing the narrative that Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was a huge and important moment for Biden and his campaign, it’s been downhill ever since. For weeks, the media pitched the speech as Biden’s moment to reset his campaign and restore hope that he has a chance of winning in November.
And then the polls started coming out. Not only did Biden not get a bump in the polls, but they all generally showed the race staying the same, while some showed Trump’s position improving. As of Friday morning, there have been several national match-up polls, and all of them, save one, showed Trump ahead.
That poll, from the left-wing site Daily Kos, oversampled Democrats by five points and still only managed to show Biden up by one point — which is well within the poll's margin of error of nearly three points. But I digress.
The White House clearly knows that all its hopes and dreams for the State of the Union address didn't come to fruition. There was no bump in the polls, and Biden's "fiery" side disappeared into the ether the moment the drugs wore off.
Ever since the speech, we've seen Biden return to his usual low-energy, gaffe-prone self, and his handlers have taken to protecting him from the media as much as possible to minimize embarrassing incidents. In other words, after the media proclaimed that Biden proved the skeptics wrong and that he was capable of being president, his handlers shoved him back into the basement.
Related: LOL! No Bump for Biden From State of the Union Speech
Things are not going well for the Biden campaign. And if you thought that was bad, it just got worse. Biden's national match-up polling isn't the only thing not moving in his direction. Battleground state polling is trending to Trump as well.
On Friday, Tom Bevan, the co-founder & president of RealClearPolitics, reported that based on current RCP poll averages in battleground states, Donald Trump would win with 312 Electoral College votes to Biden's 226 Electoral College votes if the election were held today.
If the election were held today, based on the current RCP Poll Averages in battleground states this would be the Electoral College map:https://t.co/3EDqmgGopE pic.twitter.com/YHtzczLf64
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) March 15, 2024
This is an even better map for Donald Trump than just a few days ago, when he was winning 293 to Biden's 245. What happened? New polls out of Pennsylvania put Trump in the lead there. Previously, Biden had a +0.8 spread, but now Trump has a +0.6 spread. It's still technically a toss-up, but Trump leading in two post-State of the Union polls in Pennsylvania was most certainly not what the Biden White House was expecting.
It's worth noting here that based on the latest map from RealClearPolitics averages, Trump wouldn't even need Pennsylvania to clinch the election.
It goes without saying that if Biden couldn't move the needle in his favor after his State of the Union speech, it will be very difficult for him to do so going forward. Yes, there's plenty of time between now and the election, but the State of the Union was his best shot to reset his campaign, and he blew it.
