OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
For incumbent Democrat President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., the result of a poll released Friday from key 2024 battleground states could signify the last gasps of his presidential ambitions, though for former president and GOP frontrunner Donald J. Trump, it may be his vindication.
According to The Daily Caller News Foundation, a Reuters/Ipsos poll of the states with the narrowest margins in the highly contentious and still disputed 2020 Presidential election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, showed that across these crucial swing States, Trump holds a breakaway 6% advantage in a poll of 4,413 U.S. adults with a 2% margin of error. Reuters reported that ” In those states, Trump led with 41% to Biden’s 35%, and 24% undecided.”
The split among independent voters while closer, still within the margin, but came out for Trump with a 32/30 split with 38% undecided. In a hypothetical head-to-head, this leads to a statistical tie.
The new poll also confirmed a growing national sentiment, previously reported by Explain America: that Biden is just too old.
Reuters reported: “Voters expressed concern over Biden’s age and his fitness for office. Seventy-seven percent of respondents, including 65% of Democrats, said Biden is too old to be president, while just 39% said Biden was mentally sharp enough for the presidency.”
Compare this to 56% of those polled who said Trump is too old for the office, while nonetheless, 54% said he was still “mentally sharp enough to handle the challenges of the presidency.”
2024 National GE:
Trump 39%
Biden 39%
.
Swing States*:
Trump 41% (+6)
Biden 35%.@Reuters/@ipsos, 4,413 Adults, 9/8-14https://t.co/lxUV0SdV69
*Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada and Michigan
— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) September 15, 2023
Going back as far as February, nearly 9 out of 10 Democrats said that Biden should no longer lead the party, with many believing he is too old.
An AP-NORC poll reported by Explain America asked: “Who should lead the Democratic Party?” And only 12 percent said it should be Biden. According to the poll, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies (D-NY), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) all received 5% of the possible answers, which included seven options.
Around the same time, another report revealed Democratic Party leaders believe that Biden is just too old to run again for the presidency next year.
“Nobody wants to be the one to do something that would undermine the chances of a Democratic victory in 2024,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) told Politico for a story published Feb 16th. “Yet in quiet rooms, the conversation is just the opposite — we could be at a higher risk if this path is cleared.”
Writer Jonathan Martin noted that not many people will go on the record: “There was the senator who said few Democrats in the chamber want Biden to run again but that the party had to devise ‘an alignment of interest’ with the president to get him off the ‘narcotic’ of the office; there was the governor who mused about just how little campaigning Biden would be able to do; and there was the House member who, after saying that, of course, Democrats should renominate the president told me to turn off my phone and then demanded to know who else was out there and said Harris wasn’t an option.”
The window of opportunity for an alternate Democrat to step into the race is closing rapidly, though, with California Gov. Gavin Newsom urging his donors, “Time to move on, let’s go,” urging them to stop courting him as a candidate and line up behind Biden and if need be, Vice President Kamala Harris, whose polling numbers stand even more abysmally than Biden’s numbers.
He told Chuck Todd on Meet The Press, “Well, I think the vice president is naturally the one lined up, and the filing deadlines are quickly coming to pass, and I think we need to move past this notion that he’s not going to run. President Biden is going to run, and looking forward to getting him reelected.
“I think there’s been so much wallowing in the last few months and handwringing in this respect. But we’re gearing up for the campaign. We’re looking forward to it,” he added.
