There will be presidential elections in the USA in a year. At the moment everything boils down to a duel between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But dismal poll numbers are putting the incumbent under pressure. A prominent Democrat is already thinking out loud about a “horse change.”
There is a sense of alarm among the US Democrats: a year before the presidential election, incumbent Joe Biden has fallen behind Donald Trump in five of the six most important battleground states. According to surveys by the Siena College Research Institute commissioned by the New York Times, Biden is four to ten percentage points behind the Republican among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. According to the information, only in Wisconsin is the US President ahead by two percentage points. The survey results were collected between October 22nd and November 3rd.
Biden and Trump are currently considered by far the most promising candidates from their respective parties to run in the election on November 5, 2024. In the 2020 election, Biden was able to win all of the six so-called swing states. Trump now leads there with an average of 48 to 44 percent ahead of the 80-year-old.
Joe Biden also behind Trump nationwide
A new national survey by the US broadcaster CBS paints a similar picture. Accordingly, in a duel between Biden and Trump, only 48 percent of those surveyed would choose the incumbent, but 51 percent would choose his challenger. Exactly four years ago, on November 6, 2019, Biden led Trump by 10.2 percentage points nationally. In the end, he won the election with 51.3 to 46.8 percent of all votes cast.
In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton was 2.2 percentage points ahead of Trump on November 6, 2015 and also received the majority of votes with 48.2 to 46.1 percent. Due to the US electoral system, which awards all the state’s electors to the winner in each state, Trump still moved into the White House.
The result from 2016 shows the particular importance of the key states in which Biden is currently weak. While Clinton only won four of the eleven states that were considered swing states at the time and was thus able to secure 32 electoral votes, Trump was ahead in all other key states and received 114 so-called electoral votes there.
Too old for the job? Compared to these heads of state and government, Joe Biden is almost a youngster
The incumbent US President was born on November 20, 1942, so he will celebrate his 82nd birthday a good two weeks after the 2024 US election. Doubts are already arising again and again – not just among Republicans – as to whether Biden is still up to the demands of the office at his age – both physically and mentally. But since the Democrats don’t have any other promising candidates, the currently most powerful man in the world is doing it himself again. If he gets through a second term, he would then leave office at the age of 86.
Biden’s campaign team is confident despite the poor poll numbers and points out that the election is still a year away. The president is working to mobilize voters to support his re-election, his aides say. “We will win in 2024 by bending over our work, not by getting upset about a survey,” team spokesman Kevin Muñoz commented on the New York Times survey.
But not all Democrats see it as relaxed. David Axelrod, the party’s prominent political strategist and former adviser to President Barack Obama, advised Biden on Sunday to think carefully about whether he should continue seeking re-election. “Only @JoeBiden can make this decision,” Axelrod wrote on the social network or that of the country?”
It is “very late to change horses” and according to Biden’s campaign team, the president is determined to run, Axelrod stated. But the new poll will justifiably send “shockwaves of doubt” through the Democratic Party. Biden can be proud of his achievements, but Trump is “a dangerous, deranged demagogue” who “shamelessly despises” the rules, norms, laws and institutions of democracy, Axelrod wrote, warning: “The risks of miscalculation are too dramatic to ignore them”.
Sources: “New York Times”, Real Clear Politics, David Axelrod on X, “The Hill”, “Politico”, State Center for Political Education Baden-Württemberg, Polyas, “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”
