President Joe Biden welcomed the New Year with another gut punch in the polls on Monday when a USA Today/Suffolk University survey showed him losing to former president Donald Trump by two points. To boot, the survey showed Mr Biden losing Hispanic voters and young people against Mr Trump.
At this point, Mr Biden’s flagging poll numbers are hardly news. Numerous surveys have shown his numbers declining and the president either in a dead heat with or behind Mr Trump.
Mr Biden has long struggled to win over Hispanic voters ever since the 2020 Nevada caucus when he lost to Sen Bernie Sanders and in 2020 when numerous Hispanics, mainly in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and South Florida, moved rightward, even as Mr Biden won a majority of them.
Mr Biden’s low numbers with young people are also unsurprising as many of them have expressed dissatisfaction about his support for Israel and feel he has not done enough on student loan relief, even though he did wipe out tons of student debt and the Supreme Court blocked his larger student debt cancellation effort.
What does stand out is that the poll reveals both Mr Biden’s biggest weaknesses and his best hope for re-election, respectively: the lack of enthusiasm for him and the fact that Americans are starting to feel a bit better about the economy.
Enthusiasm has never been Mr Biden’s biggest strong suit. He ran for president twice before 2020, once when he failed to make it to the primaries in 1988 and again when he dropped out after the Iowa caucus in 2008 before Barack Obama made him his running mate. He beat Democratic competitors in 2020 largely because many primary voters – namely older Black voters in the South – did not want to risk a candidate who could lose to Mr Trump.
Mr Biden offered numerous olive branches to supporters of other primary candidates by adopting some of their policies, showing he would treat the left with more respect than Mr Obama ever did. Many formerly Republican areas of the country such as the suburbs of Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia got behind him as they found Mr Trump too repulsive. But that meant that he never really had a mandate beyond winning.
This – along with concerns about his advanced age and higher prices – might be why the USA Today/Suffolk survey showed that only 18 per cent of people rated themselves as a “10” when it came to being enthusiastic about voting for Mr Biden.
Conversely, 44 per cent of Mr Trump’s supporters rated themselves as a “10,” and quite understandably. Mr Trump has convinced a large slab of the Republican electorate that the “Deep State” and a secret cabal stole the 2020 election from him, and therefore from his supporters. He has since acted as a president-in-waiting, campaigning around the country since he left the White House.
This whipped his supporters into excitement at the anticipation of his assuming the Oval Office – as well as punishing those whom they believe unjustly usurped his spot. Despite the Potemkin debates and chatter about other candidates, none of them ever posed a threat to Mr Trump’s supremacy in the polls. This means that Republicans are primed and ready for a Trump 2024 run and are excited about it.
That being said, Mr Biden has one potential bright spot: people are starting to feel somewhat better about the economy. In October, 21 per cent of people said that the economy is improving. That number jumped to 29 per cent in this survey.
There are reasons to be optimistic too. The most recent inflation report showed that prices only jumped by 0.1 per cent in November and the latest numbers will be released next week. And unemployment remains fairly low at 3.7 per cent according to the latest report. The jobs numbers for December will be released on Friday.
This was enough for the Federal Reserve to not raise interest rates at their recent meeting. Meanwhile, consumer confidence rose last month going into the holiday season. In addition, GasBuddy also predicted that fuel prices will drop in 2024, which could provide Mr Biden with a sigh of relief.
All of this indicates that the US economy is headed toward the “soft landing” that Mr Biden has prayed for after he inherited an economy devastated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Of course, plenty could change by November. Mr Trump’s trials are still pending and the probing has not begun in earnest. Similarly, House Republicans opened their impeachment inquiry into Mr Biden just before they left for the holidays and without much evidence, which will likely take up much of the oxygen next year. There’s also still the war in Ukraine and Israel’s war with Hamas.
All of these could bring unexpected shifts. But as of right now, Mr Biden should be hoping that an improved economy will make people more excited.
