If the United States elections were held today, Monday, it’s very probable that Donald Trump will win handily. At least, that is what the poll published on Monday by the newspaper suggests. Wall Street Journal, which gives both the former president and the current occupant of the White House, the same voting intention: 46%. Given the electoral system in the United States – the so-called electoral college – which favors the least populated states, which tend to vote Republican, a tie would mean, in practice, that Trump would win. Other surveys indicate that data from the Journal are not a statistical aberration. The Economist, Fox Newsthe Morning Consult consulting firm and Emerson University have published two polls in which Biden oscillates between 43% and 44%, and Trump between 41% and 46%.
In 2020 it was estimated that for Biden to overcome the structural obstacle of the electoral college he needed to get three percentage points more than Trump. In the final results, Biden won by 4.5 points, the largest difference in an election since 2008. The electoral college momentum is so great that, in fact, of the three elections Republicans have won since 2000 – two George W. Bush and a Donald Trump – only in one – the one in 2004, in which Bush was re-elected – obtained more votes than the Democratic candidates.
There is another element that invites caution: there are 14 months left for the elections, which will take place on November 5. That, in politics, is an eternity, as revealed by the fact that Biden’s popularity is 39%. It is a very low figure, until it is compared with what Trump and Barack Obama had, at this point in their respective terms of office. So it turns out that Biden is more popular than them.
So there is still a long game to go, if the game has even started. That is evidently what Biden supporters are saying. And, also, those of the dozen Republican candidates who compete with Trump for the White House nomination for that party. The Trump team, of course, sees things very differently.
Be that as it may, the US voters’ view of the election is extremely worrying for Biden’s team. 51% of those surveyed in the study cited by the Wall Street Journalbelieve that Trump achieved more in his presidency than Biden, compared to only 40% who think otherwise. Especially serious for the current president is the idea of his voters about what his campaign has decided will be the lynchpin of his argument for re-election: the economy. Just 28% of Americans say the economic situation has improved in the past two years, while 58% believe it has gotten worse.