The 2024 race for the White House did not have to be an unpopular national embarrassment. For that, you can blame President Biden.
His worst strategic decision was running for reelection. Yes, he had his reasons — three of them, by my reckoning — but the data and polls confirm Biden’s consequential blunder. His likely defeat will consequently be the three I's: infirmity, inflation and immigration.
According to the RealClearPolitics poll averages, with “no toss-up states,” former President Donald Trump would win 312 Electoral College votes to Biden’s 226 if the election were held today. In 2020, Biden won 306 to Trump’s 232.
On June 21, 2020, Biden led Trump by 9.8 percentage points. At the same point in the election cycle precisely four years later, the race is virtually tied. To illustrate how much worse off Biden is this time, Trump led Biden in only two outlier national polls out of hundreds taken throughout the 2020 cycle. This time, he leads in most polls.
More critically, in the seven battleground states that will decide the election, Trump leads by an average margin of 3.3 points. That is a significant achievement considering that in 2020, Biden won Michigan by 2.78 points, Pennsylvania by 1.17 points and Wisconsin by 0.63 points.
In Arizona, where Biden won by only 0.3 points in 2020, Trump dominates, with an average lead of 4.6 percent. The same is true in Georgia, where Trump’s lead averages 4.8 points, dwarfing Biden’s 0.23-point margin of victory.
More reliable than polls are the incumbent president’s job approval rating. Yesterday, Biden averaged 40.4 percent, an encouraging trend since he rarely breaks 40.........