Democrats are right to worry that Donald Trump might again occupy the White House, next time as POTUS 47.
Trump leads Biden in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average of general election polls and, more specifically, now is ahead of Biden in the six crucial battleground states that could determine who takes the oath of office on January 20, 2025.
Those states include the all-important Pennsylvania, where Biden was recently ahead.
As well, Biden’s RCP approval rating is abysmal. And most Americans, the average shows, think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Indeed, across the most important measures — crime, the economy, and immigration — the numbers suggest that Americans are simply fed up with the aging, ailing president, who now has aides escort him to Marine One when he leaves the White House.
Election, Battleground
The RCP average on the general election is close, but Trump is on top by 1.1 points, 46-44.9
Trump has prevailed in five of the last 10 polls. The latest CNN poll put him ahead by 6 points. Trump has also defeated Biden in nine of the 20 polls, with seven for Biden and four ties.
In early April, a Rasmussen survey had Trump ahead by 8 points.
Equally important for Trump, and more disturbing for the 81-year-old president, Trump has surpassed him in the states that could put either man back in the White House.
Trump is strongest in Arizona and North Carolina, where he leads Biden by 5 and 5.4 points, respectively.
Trump is similarly situated in Nevada, with a 4.5-point margin. In Georgia, he leads by a smaller 3.8 points.
Biden is closer in the bluer states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, with spreads of 1.2, 1.8, and 1.0, respectively.
Approval, Nation’s Direction
Yet those voter surveys don’t exactly reflect the widespread disappointment — if not anger —over what Biden has done to the country since taking office.
That dissatisfaction turns up in the RCP approval polls. Generally, those polled are quite unhappy with both Biden’s performance and the direction of the country.
The increasingly frail president’s job approval average is a dismal -16.5; i.e., just 39.8 percent of those polled approve of his performance, against a whopping 56.3 percent who don’t.
But breaking down that overall number paints an even bleaker picture for the 46th president.
On the economy, his negative number is 18.6. Crime is a little better at -15.5, but on immigration and the Biden-backed “migrant” invasion, he’s wandered into serious trouble with a -30.7 rating. Just 32.5 percent of those polled approve of his performance, versus 63.2 who don’t.
On foreign policy, voters apparently aren’t enamored with his obsession with Ukraine. Biden’s rating is almost as bad as it is on immigration: -25.2
And all that is summarized in the survey on the direction of the country. Just 24.1 percent think the country is headed in the right direction, versus 65.4 percent who think the American train has jumped its tracks. Rating: -41.3.
What the Numbers Mean
Writing for The Hill, Democratic analyst and strategist Doug Schoen thinks Biden is in trouble — deep trouble.
After an apparent surge in the polls after his unhinged State of the Union address, Schoen wrote, Biden’s numbers collapsed.
“A new national poll from CNN shows former President Donald Trump leading President Biden by 6 points in a head-to-head horserace, 49 percent to 43 percent,” he wrote:
Worse, just one-third (34 percent) of voters approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, a tried and true metric for how Americans will likely vote.
Put another way, if consumer sentiment is any indication of Biden’s electoral fate, Democrats have reason to worry. In fact, 65 percent of registered voters say the economy is “extremely important” to them. And, in analyzing how this group of economic-centric voters plan to cast their ballots, Biden is projected to lose by over 30 points, 62 percent to 30 percent.
In that same vein, state-level polling from Fox News shows Trump is back in the driver’s seat, with his New York City trial doing little to dent his numbers. The poll shows Trump leading Biden in the seven key swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — by anywhere from 1 to 5 points, making his path to victory slimmer by the day.
On top of all that, Biden faces another hurdle. He must somehow convince voters he can do the job at 82 years old and clearly in declining physical and mental health.
As The New American reported last week, citing Axios, Biden is so unsteady on his feet that he asked his handlers to walk him to Marine One on the South Lawn.
As for his cognitive slide, he is increasingly given to bizarre remarks and false memories.
Most recently, he falsely claimed that cannibals on New Guinea ate his aviator uncle who crashed near the island 80 years ago during World War II.
