The 2024 presidential election is 10 months away, and both the Democratic and Republican parties are already buzzing with campaign strategies, political schemes, and the difficult process of determining which candidate has the best shot at making it into the Oval Office. The whittling down of potential candidates is over for the Democrats and all but finished for the Republicans after Nikki Haley’s humiliating loss in the Nevada GOP Primary. The battle has been narrowed down to two: former president Donald Trump and incumbent president Biden.
It has been a rather shaky start to the campaign season for both candidates, with Trump being kicked off the Colorado Ballot and Biden having a historically low polling average. Despite facing 91 criminal charges, including 44 federal charges, Trump remains on top. Here’s why: In national ratings, Biden has made history—and not in a good way. Biden has been trailing in the national polls for months, a position no Democratic presidential nominee has been in since 2004. One reason for this deflation of popularity lies in the huge chunk of cash the government is spending on foreign aid. Many feel that taxpayer money could be better spent on issues on the American homefront, such as schools and infrastructure, rather than on the battlegrounds of the Middle East. Consequently, Biden has the worst approval rating at this point in the season for any elected president through their first term ever.
A recent NBC News poll placed Trump at 47% and Biden at a mere 42% in the approval ratings. This is a shocking turnaround from the 2020 election, during which Biden never trailed Trump in a single national poll. An even more troubling fact for Democrats is the slow but steady flow of Black voters leaving the Democratic party. According to NBC News, “In 2020, Black voters favored Biden over Trump by a margin of 78 percentage points. In a new survey, Biden’s margin had dropped to 49 points.” Black voters are not the only ones dropping the Democratic party. According to CNN, recent polling in 2023 revealed a record-low number of Americans who identified themselves as Democrats—a mere 27% of adults, the lowest for the party since 1988.
The liberal party is fractured into factions, with some fighting for Biden to step down while others feel he is their only option. A senior Democratic aide summed up the Biden poll situation in a few words: “This is a five-alarm fire.”
This article also appears in our February 2024 print edition.
