The 2024 presidential general election is here, for all intents and purposes. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are set to face off in the first presidential rematch since 1956. It’s also the first rematch between a current and a former president since 1892.
But unlike in 2020 when he was favored over Trump for the entirety of the campaign, Biden faces a rougher road this time around. Indeed, he has no better than a 50-50 shot for reelection, and fans of the current president should be aware that Trump has a real chance at retaking the White House.
Just look at the polls that were released in the past week. Surveys from The New York Times/Siena College, CBS News/YouGov, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal all gave Trump a higher percentage of the vote than Biden by margins ranging from 2 to 4 points. (KFF had Biden scoring 3 points higher than Trump.)
All those results were officially within the margin of error, but put together they paint a picture of a troubled incumbent.
It’s not just that Biden is in worse shape against his general election opponent than almost any incumbent in the past 75 years (save Trump in 2020). It’s that a lead of any margin for Trump was unheard of during the 2020 campaign – not a single poll that met CNN’s standards for publication showed Trump leading Biden nationally.
And in that 2020 race, the states that put Biden over the top in the Electoral College (Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin) were each decided by less than a point. He had very little margin for error.
The state of polling today looks worse for Biden. I’ve previously pointed out that the president looks to be in a considerably worse position in Sun Belt battleground states today than four years ago.
He’s trailing by 5 points or more in the most recent…
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