The polling for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign doesn’t look so good for him: The numbers show him trailing Donald Trump in key battleground states. But somehow this isn’t setting off alarms inside his campaign. Why? “President Biden doesn’t believe his bad poll numbers, and neither do many of his closest advisers,” Axios said. Biden instead is telling donors, advisers and the press that he’s doing better than those numbers suggest. “While the press doesn’t write about it, the momentum is clearly in our favor,” he said.
Some of Biden’s fellow Democrats worry he’s in denial about his weaknesses with voters, The Hill said. “Let’s cut through the BS, on the three top issues — inflation, immigration and the war in Gaza — he’s in the toilet,” one strategist said. But the president’s team is brushing off the naysayers, said The New York Times. “The reality is that many voters are not paying close attention to the election,” said a Biden campaign pollster, “and have not started making up their minds.” There is, after all, roughly half a year to go before Election Day.
What did the commentators say?
“Polls are only snapshots — and are often blurry,” Eric Lutz said at Vanity Fair. Still, there is concern that Biden’s accomplishments aren’t being reflected in the polls. Then again, the polls themselves are confusing. Most respondents want a candidate who will “bring politics in Washington back to normal” but also want the country’s institutions to be “torn down entirely.” Which might be why Biden is skeptical of the results. “Biden subscribes to a more optimistic view — that the public is too decent and normal to elect Trump again.”
“Biden doesn’t seem to recognize he’s in big trouble,” Karl Rove said at The Wall Street Journal. But Democrats outside his circle are “more clear-eyed.” James Carville, for example, has complained that Biden’s team is filled with Ivy Leaguers who aren’t in touch with “the world people are living in.” The president does have a financial advantage over Trump that could boost him in some of the closer battleground states. But it’s time to face a dark truth about swing voters: “The president is running out of time to convince these voters that Donald Trump is worse than he is.”
What next?
There is a “sliver of hope” for Biden in recent polls, Vox said. While he’s doing terribly in the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, the president is within striking distance of Trump in Great Lakes swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Win those three states — plus all the usual Democratic strongholds — and Biden “could reach the 270 Electoral College votes he needs for a second term in the White House.”
The truth is “we don’t know” how the campaign will turn out, Mark Murray said at NBC News. Polls can tell us what issues are on voters’ minds, or give an indication about turnout. The future isn’t set in stone. “Whether that idea is maddening or liberating, all we know is that the race remains close.”