President Joe Biden’s campaign is desperately trying to assure the American people that he won’t be dropping out of the race, and that includes staffers at the White House.
Biden’s campaign circulated an all-staff memo Wednesday morning that included internal polling that shows the president neck-and-neck with former President Donald Trump, ahead of a forthcoming poll from The New York Times/Siena College. According to the memo, the Times poll is expected to “show a slightly larger swing in the race” following Biden’s disastrous performance at the first presidential debate last week.
The campaign’s internal polling of battleground states found that Biden has only dropped half a percentage point since his lackluster debate performance, going from 43 percent to 42 percent, according to Politico, which received a copy of the memo. Meanwhile, the polling found that Trump only improved his advantage by 0.2 percent.
These results are markedly more optimistic for Biden than others. CBS released a poll Wednesday that found Trump had a three- point advantage in battleground states, and two-point advantage nationally. A CNN poll released Tuesday found that most voters believe Democrats could improve their bid for the White House by backing a different candidate.
It’s worth noting, though, that the debate was expected to provide Biden a massive boost in popularity. So the fact that his performance has dropped, even by a tiny amount, is still a bad sign.
While the results of these polls have sent many Democrats running around like chickens with their heads cut off, the Biden campaign has insisted that they should keep calm and carry on.
“We are going to see a few polls come out today and we want you all to hear from us on what we know internally and what we expect to come externally,” said the memo. “Polls are a snapshot in time and we should all expect them to continue to fluctuate—it will take a few weeks, not a few days, to get a full picture of the race.”
As short-sighted as it is to change one’s tune over the results of a couple of polls, the criticisms of Biden post-debate don’t seem to be going anywhere just yet, If anything, the search for a new candidate only appears to be growing in strength, with Democratic leaders offering to back Vice President Kamala Harris should Biden choose to withdraw.
Maintaining business as usual is a particularly difficult message to sell given that Biden has reportedly said he is weighing whether or not to drop out, reports which the White House has been quick to deny. As tensions rise within the Democratic Party, calming nerves and quelling dissent may go hand in hand for Biden’s inner circle, who have been accused of shielding him from calls to withdraw.
