I've never been one to obsess over polling, but this year, I'm looking at it from all angles — national polls, battleground state polls, approval ratings, Senate races, the generic ballot polls, you name it — all to give me the best possible picture of the state of this year's presidential election. And I'm sure I'm not the first to tell you that things look great for Donald Trump right now.
There's no denying it, and political experts on both sides of the aisle see it. There's a reason Democrats are panicking and want Joe Biden to drop out: The overwhelming majority of polls show that this year's presidential election looks great for Trump. And one only has to look back at 2020 polling to see that things have changed a lot in four years.
For example, in 2020, Trump never once had the lead in the RealClearPolitics average. Not once. Biden's final RCP average was +7.2 points — just barely below Obama's +7.6 points in 2008. In other words, Electoral College landslide territory. Yet despite having a significant lead in the polls, Biden's victory came down to a few thousand votes in a few select states. Biden's true national popular vote lead was +4.5 points — and that was with the added benefit of mass mail-in voting.
I would argue that Trump has several advantages in 2024 that he didn't in 2016, most notably the direct contrast between his first term and Biden's term. Frankly, there's no contest, and even typically reliable Democratic constituencies like black, young, and Hispanic voters are peeling away and looking to support Trump.
Hence, Trump is leading in most of the battleground states. Some are more comfortable leads than others, but Biden would love to be in Trump's position in the polls right now. Yet he's not.
On top of everything else, Biden's approval ratings in the battleground states are nowhere near where they need to be for Biden to be confident he can turn things around.
Biden’s average approval in swing states, per new WSJ poll: 38%
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) April 3, 2024
Trump’s retrospective approval in those same swing states: 51% pic.twitter.com/w0YA6Uyl5D
Of course, it is not my intention to give a false sense of optimism. There's still plenty of time before the election, which means anything can happen, and trust me, it will. Biden's team is certainly worried about how the Israel-Hamas war will pan out and whether a recession might hit. Adding to that unease is the concern that Biden's public performances are going to hurt him because, let's face it, it's all been downhill since the State of the Union, along with any negative press connected to the border crisis.
Trump, on the other hand, has a different problem: himself. While he has successfully improved his position by pointing out that he's the target of partisan lawfare, he tends to make some unforced errors with his mouth. Of course, he is who he is, but I sincerely hope he runs a disciplined campaign because the Democrats are desperate—perhaps even more so in 2024 than in 2020.
Luckily, we don't have the pandemic to use as a pretext for a mass mail-in voting scheme, but that doesn't mean we can trust Democrats to play fair. Trump has to win big to win. He may be ahead right now, but he still has to fight like he's five points behind. Everything is working for him at the moment, and if the election doesn't go his way, it will be because he lost it, not because Joe Biden won it.
