At the end of January, Democratic President Joe Biden's strategists They were bewildered. Despite the good results of the economy, and the successive judicial entanglements of his adversary, the populist Republican Donald Trump, The president saw that the former president – whom Biden narrowly defeated in 2020 – was taking a considerable lead in the polls.
On January 26, the average of the main polls carried out by the political news portal Real Clear Politics (RCP) presented Trump with 47.3 percent of voting intentions, against 43 percent for Biden, 4.3 percentage points ahead, a wide margin considering the closeness of the outcome of this century's US elections.
In those days, the feeling that Trump would win the November elections was dominant. A Siena College survey for The New York Times showed that 48 percent of voters thought Trump would win, versus just 39 percent who thought Biden would be re-elected.
The image of an elderly president, with memory failures and limited abilities to deal with internal problems as well as war tensions in the world, cast doubt on whether Biden would remain an option for the Democratic candidacy, while his opponent, besieged by half a dozen judicial processes, he settled more and more into his position as an alleged victim of politicized justice.
Twelve weeks later, the same CPR polling average shows an almost exact tie: Trump with 45.6 percent, and Biden, on the rise, with 45.4 percent, just two tenths apart. These are significant numbers now that, after sweeping the first round of primary elections since February, both are almost assured of the nomination of their respective parties.
The particularities of the presidential election system in the United States mean that, sometimes, more than the national average of the polls, the key is how the race goes in the states whose delegates to the Electoral College – in charge of choosing the new president – are decisive. .
Based on the experience of recent decades, analysts consider that Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada are the states that can make a difference. They call them Top battlegrounds, and in them the average polls continue to favor Trump by 48 percent against 45.5 percent for Biden, a difference of 2.5 percent.
But what is interesting is the evolution: at the beginning of February, that difference was almost five percentage points, double. While voting intentions for Trump in those states appear to have peaked at 48 percent, Biden experiences a clear rise of one point per month this year, to approach 46 percent.
The most recent of the large national surveys, that of Siena College for The New York Times, confirmed the trend this weekend. The poll among registered voters put Trump at 46 percent and Biden at 45 percent.
Both candidates “are now virtually tied,” explained the New York newspaper article. “an improvement for Biden compared to late February, when Trump led 48 percent to 43 percent.” Despite doubts about his age, the newspaper adds, “there are signs of a regrouping of the Democratic base behind the president.”
Speech adjustments
After the poor results of the polls at the beginning of the year, the Biden introduced adjustments to his speech, especially on critical issues such as the conflict between Hamas and Israel, that broke out on October 7, after the terrorist incursion of that group, from Gaza into Israeli territory.
The Hamas assault left more than 760 Israeli civilians dead, including 36 children – some were beheaded – and nearly 250 Israeli civilians and uniformed personnel kidnapped, including several women who were raped. From the first moment, Biden supported Israel, Washington's great ally in the area.
But in the following months, The military response of Benjamin Netanyahu's government caused enormous destruction in Gaza, with children killed by bombings, hospitals destroyed, Palestinian civilians killed while queuing for food, and international aid workers – such as the humanitarian group of José Andrés, the famous Spanish chef based in the United States – who lost their lives while bringing food to the refugees.
Left-wing sectors of Biden's Democratic Party began to harshly criticize him for continuing to support Israel, And among his advisors, many feared that the loss of those endorsements would allow Trump to distance himself even further in the polls.
Biden began to criticize Netanyahu and put conditions on the military aid that Washington provides him, without abandoning his ally: this weekend, when Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles against Israeli territory, there was high-tech American support to take them down.
That help and the Iron Dome anti-aircraft shield that Tel Aviv maintains deployed allowed it to destroy 99 percent of the Iranian projectiles in the air.
This delicate balance for Biden is critical to not lose voters: 42 percent of them sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians, according to the Siena College survey, while only 24 percent are more sympathetic to the Palestinians. But among Democratic voters, sympathy for Israelis drops to 27 percent, while for Palestinians it rises to 41 percent. However, among independents – who can decide the election – Israel once again has greater sympathy (41 percent) compared to 23 percent for the Palestinians.
Another adjustment by Biden's campaign has focused on charging much more for good economic results. While many nations on the planet are bordering on recession or falling into it, the United States grew at a surprising rate of 3.1 percent in 2023. And although it still does not slow down enough, inflation marked an annual increase of 3.5 percent in March. percent, against more than 5 percent a year ago.
Biden is seizing the moment in an attempt to counter one of former President Donald Trump's fiercest lines of attack.
“The United States economy is growing faster than expected, while inflation decreases – the portal politico.com recently explained – and “The Biden administration is seizing the moment in an attempt to counter one of former President Donald Trump’s fiercest lines of attack.”
Another good news for Biden is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of former prosecutor Bob Kennedy, assassinated when he was a presidential candidate in 1968, barely scored 2 percent in the Siena College poll.
Kennedy Jr., of Democratic origin like his father but running as an independent for the November elections, scored an average of 8 percent in the polls, according to RCP, and took away many voters from the conservative fringe of the Democrats from Biden. The languid 2 percent in the Siena poll deals a serious blow to his aspiration.
The former president and abortion
By the way, Trump has also had to make adjustments. The most notable has to do with the thorny abortion issue, in which the former president had approached the most radical groups on the right, which promote an almost absolute prohibition.
On April 8, Trump refined his speech, based on the Supreme Court decision that, in 2022, overturned the historic ruling of Roe v. Wade. In that 1973 ruling, the highest court had decided that the US Constitution protected the right of every woman to have an abortion without excessive restrictions. The current court, much more conservative, threw it back and He left the states the freedom to decide on the issue. Since then, states like Arizona have moved toward a near-total ban.
Hardline Trumpist groups wanted him to push for a near-total nationwide ban. But the former president chose to rely on the Supreme Court's ruling: “… now that we have abortion where everyone wanted it from a legal point of view, the states will determine it by vote or legislation,” he declared in a video on their network, Truth Media.
The Trump campaign was concerned about the loss of support among women, and feared that a more radical stance than that of the Supreme Court would alienate more female voters. According to the Siena College survey, Trump leads Biden among men 57 to 37 percent, but loses among women 53 to 37 percent.
But not defending a national ban on abortion distances him from the radical right. After seeing the video on Truht Media, Marjorie Dannenfelser, spokesperson for the anti-abortion group Pro-Life America, told CNN: “We are deeply disappointed by President Trump's position, unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections against the brutality of abortion. abortion industry.
We are deeply disappointed by President Trump's position (on abortion)
But Trump faces more complicated problems. When the dilatory attempts of his lawyers failed, Trump finally sat in the dock this Monday, accused of 34 criminal charges, including having spent tens of thousands of dollars from his 2016 campaign, to stop compromising testimonies from women who had had a sexual relationship with him, such as the former X-movie actress, Stormy Daniels. To that end, he doctored accounting reports and used money raised for his campaign, which constitutes fraud against the law.
Until now, in the midst of his numerous judicial entanglements, Trump has profited by posing as a victim, and attacking judges and prosecutors. But this time it won't be easy for him. Colombian-born judge Juan Merchán, known for imposing strict conditions in his hearings to avoid a media circus, prohibited Trump from making public comments about the judge and his family, about the prosecutor and about the witnesses.
With this, the former president loses one of his favorite weapons, which he may need at a time when, with seven months left until the vote, the electoral race is tightening.
MAURICIO VARGAS – EL TIEMPO ANALYST – [email protected]
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