The Democrats counted on Joe Biden’s “fiery” State of the Union address to reset his campaign and give him a shot at winning in November. At first, it looked like there was no bump at all. However, a few weeks later, a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll of battleground states showed that Biden’s position had indeed improved, albeit modestly.
"Finally, some good news for President Joe Biden on the polling front,” an article in Bloomberg boasted. Trump still had a lead in the seven battlegrounds, but Biden had measurable gains in six of them, "significantly so in at least two, according to the poll."
Predictably, it wasn't only the Biden supporters boasting about the poll. Never Trumpers, who consistently anticipated a tightening of polls once Trump clinched the GOP nomination, saw the tightening as proof that they were right.
But the thing about bumps is, they’re small and they don’t last. The poll from Bloomberg/Morning Consult shows that the "recent polling bump in key battleground states has mostly evaporated as a deep current of pessimism about the trajectory of the US economy hurts his standing with voters."
Related: Now We Know Who Really Benefits From Bidenomics
"The April Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll found Biden is ahead in just one of the seven states most likely to determine the outcome of his matchup with Donald Trump, leading Michigan by 2 percentage points,” reports Bloomberg. "Biden trails the presumptive GOP nominee slightly in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and his deficit in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina is larger."
Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll shows Biden’s bump "in key battleground states has mostly evaporated as a deep current of pessimism about the trajectory of the US economy hurts his standing with voters." pic.twitter.com/8qSsMPq9xU
— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) April 24, 2024
The article noted that these results "are largely a return to the previous state of the presidential race, before a strong State of the Union address appeared to power Biden in March to his best showing in the monthly poll since it began in October."
The reversion comes as poll respondents offered a bleak near-term view of the economy, the issue that has consistently registered as their top concern at the ballot box. A majority of swing-state voters see worsening economic conditions in the coming months, with fewer than one in five saying they expect inflation and borrowing costs to be lower by the end of the year. Despite a resilient job market, only 23% of respondents said the employment rate would improve over the same time period.
For undecided voters — a group crucial to Biden’s effort to close the gap with Trump — the share who expect improvement on those economic factors was in the single digits.
“Some of the shine of the State of the Union address has worn off,” explained Matt Monday, the senior manager of Morning Consult. “People are really tying Bidenomics and their perception of the economy to the inflation rate.”
This is a huge problem for Biden because he spent so much effort linking himself to the economy with his "Bidenomics" push. People tend to blame the sitting president for the financial situation regardless, and after devoting so many resources to branding an economy that people are sour on as his creation, Biden will find it darn near impossible to dissociate himself from it.
