Democrats are in a bit of a panic over Donald Trump’s polling numbers against President Biden — the former president has led Biden in the RealClearPolitics ballot test for months and is consistently outpolling Biden in the battleground states.

They shouldn’t be panicking. They should be celebrating.

When you consider how atrocious Biden’s underlying numbers are on approval, leadership, age and, well, just about everything else, Trump should be much further ahead. Only Trump’s own weaknesses are keeping Biden and the Democrats in the game.

Biden’s bad math

Depending on the polling, Biden is either in the worst shape of any first-term president since approval polling began or nearly the worst.

According to the 538 average, cited by Interactive Polls, Biden averages negative 17 points, the lowest of any first-term president. None of the others cited with negative approval turned positive by Election Day — or won re-election. Gallup tracking is a little friendlier, showing Biden’s approval at 38 percent — better than both Donald Trump and Jimmy Carter, at 34 percent, at a similar moment in their respective terms.

The RealClearPolitics Approval has Biden at negative 14 points at the writing of this piece, averaging 41.3 percent approval. The most recent Harvard-Harris Poll, which is a bit Trump-friendly, has Biden down at just 44 percent disapprove to 53 percent approve. And the most recent YouGov poll, which is a bit Biden-friendly, has the incumbent president down 39 percent to 58 percent.

As if those numbers were not bad enough on their own, his issue numbers are worse. The top two issues for voters in both the Harris and the YouGov polls are inflation and immigration. On both issues, Biden’s approval is worse than his overall favorables. YouGov has Biden at a mere 29 percent approve on inflation with only 20 percent........

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