While Democrats have been panicking about President Biden losing the 2024 election for some time now, that is not totally rational. National popular-vote polling remains very close, so it’s far too early to write Joe off. In the RealClearPolitics averages, Trump leads Biden by 1.1 percent in a head-to-head contest, pretty much where the race has been for the last six months. In a five-way race, Trump’s lead is a marginally stronger 2.8 percent, a couple of ticks lower than it was in January and February and probably inflated by outlier polls from Rasmussen and Harvard-Harris. FiveThirtyEight is offering three-way polling averages with Biden, Trump, and Kennedy listed, and they show Trump leading by 1.2 percent.
It’s true that Biden won an Electoral College majority by an eyelash in 2020 while winning the national popular vote by 4.5 percent, but we have no way of knowing at this point how much of an advantage (if any) the distribution of votes will give Trump this time around. It’s the battleground-state polling that should be most alarming to Team Biden for the simple reason that he is consistently trailing in three Sun Belt states (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada) that were crucial to his 2020 win. If they (along with another competitive southern state, North Carolina) appear out of reach for the incumbent later in the campaign season, his path to victory may depend on a sweep in three highly competitive Rust Belt states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Two of the three Sun Belt states that are shaky for Biden may have been 2020 unicorns. Arizona went Republican in 16 of the last 18 presidential elections. Trump has led in 18 straight head-to-head polls in this cycle and in every single five-way poll that includes Kennedy, West, and Stein. Trump currently leads by 5.2 percent in the RCP averages in a two-way race, and by 5.6 percent in a five-way race. This is the epitome of a steady polling lead.
Georgia doesn’t quite have Arizona’s Republican heritage, but it had become a consistently red state in both presidential and down-ballot elections before Democrats narrowly captured the state’s presidential electors and two Senate seats in 2020. As in Arizona, Trump had held a consistent lead in the 2024 polls, and he now leads in the RCP averages by 4.6 percent in a head-to-head race and by 6.4 percent in a five-way contest. There’s been talk of North Carolina supplementing or supplanting Georgia as a potential Democratic pickup state in 2024, but the polls tell a similarly pessimistic tale for Biden so far. Trump leads by 5.4 percent in the RCP averages of a head-to-head race, and by 7.5 percent in a five-way contest, which helps confirm the impression that Kennedy is hurting Biden more than Trump in the South.
Nevada is in some respects the most difficult Sun Belt state to assess. Democrats, with a labor-driven turnout operation perfected by the late Senator Harry Reid, have regularly frustrated Republicans in recent years. But so far 2024 polls in the Silver State look very good for Trump. He leads in the RCP average of head-to-head matchups by 6.2 percent and in a five-way race by a shocking 8.8 percent. The perception that Nevada is all but off the table for Biden has been enhanced by the truly extreme numbers in hyperinfluential Times-Siena surveys, which showed Trump with an 11-point lead last November and a 13-point lead in May.
One potential ace in the hole for Biden in all these Sun Belt states is that a much-predicted revival of his support from Black voters could greatly improve his position in Georgia and North Carolina. In Arizona and Nevada, an improvement of his subpar performance among Latino voters could have a similarly positive effect. There will likely be abortion-rights measures on the ballot in both these states as well. And while it’s an unproven hypothesis that this phenomenon will give a boost to Democratic candidates, it will certainly help Democrats make the case that abortion rights are in the balance in November. Add in a likely Biden financial advantage across all the battleground states, and you could envision a significantly improved map.
But that’s all hypothetical. For now, a Biden sweep of Rust Belt battleground states seems a likelier bet. In Michigan, Trump leads in the RCP head-to-head averages by 0.3 percent, while Biden leads by 0.3 percent in a five-way race. In Pennsylvania, it’s Trump by two points in both a two-way and five-way contest. And in Wisconsin, Trump leads by 0.6 percent in a head-to-head race and by 1.2 percent with minor candidates added in.
A Biden Rust Belt sweep (assuming Biden picks off an electoral vote in Nebraska and Trump counteracts that with an electoral vote in Maine) would give the president the smallest possible majority of 270 electoral votes. That would come, of course, with a guaranteed challenge of the outcome by Team Trump, but that’s a virtual certainty in any case short of a Biden landslide. At this point, the president’s team would take any sort of win with joy and relief, even if they have to fight Trump and his mobs for a couple more months to make it stick. All in all, the path to a second Biden term is dangerously narrow.
