The rematch between President Biden and former President Trump is heating up as polls show the two rivals tied six months before Election Day.
Poll numbers are likely to fluctuate in the months leading up to the election, but for the first time since October, The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ average shows Biden narrowly ahead of Trump, 45 percent to 44.9 percent.
While the news is good for the president, the data also shows some bright spots for his rival. Trump is narrowly ahead of Biden in the critical swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ polling averages in those states.
“If you asked me who I would rather be today, I would rather be Donald Trump,” said Scott Tranter, director of data science at Decision Desk HQ.
Tranter told The Hill that the election could ultimately come down to a small handful of states.
“If I had to guess six months from now, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona would be the closest,” he said. “Obviously those will be the turning points.”
Several key issues, including the economy, abortion and immigration, could also be crucial.
“The reality is that any issue can be a deciding factor because we’re talking about a small group of voters in a select group of states,” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist.
For Biden, polls show that the flow of migrants across the southern border and the economy appear to be weak points for him.
A Decision Desk HQ/NewsNation poll released Sunday found that 46 percent of voters believe Trump is better suited to handle the southern border, while only 26 percent of respondents said Biden is the candidate to trust at the border could trust.
“Polls on issues have been telling us the same thing for a long time: the economy, prices and the border,” Heye said. “And Biden is completely underwater on these issues, and he has to fix that.”
The president is also trying to send a message to the economy as inflation remains a problem. A ABC News/Ipsos poll The poll released last week found that 88 percent of Americans said the economy was important when it came to who they would vote for, and 85 percent said the same about inflation.
Biden has touted job growth under his administration and made a series of campaign stops to highlight economic and job growth. Last month, Biden traveled to Pennsylvania the day after Tax Day. Biden also stopped in upstate New York to highlight federal funding for Micron chip manufacturing facilities.
But while the president continues to tout job growth, recent economic indicators show Americans are still suffering from high prices. Government data released last week showed U.S. economic growth fell below 2 percent in the first quarter of the year, while inflation began rising again in March to 3.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index.
Trump and the Republicans often use the economy to go on the offensive against Biden and the Democrats. Trump railed against Biden’s handling of the economy during an appearance at the courthouse at his New York hush money trial last week.
The same ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 46 percent of respondents said they trusted Trump to handle the economy, while 32 percent said the same about Biden.
Democrats say there is still time to improve economic messaging.
“We have no need to apologize for the successes we have achieved, and certainly more clearly for the threat that the other side poses when it comes to core values and core issues in this country,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist .
As Biden and his Democratic allies work to gain traction on the economic front, Trump and his Republican allies are grappling with how to deliver messages on abortion. Democrats have been vocal on this issue since the overturn of Roe v. Wade successfully spread messages in 2022. In this year’s midterm elections, Democrats were able to stave off an expected massive Republican wave, largely because of their messaging on abortion rights to the federal government repealing the law legalizing the procedure.
Sixty-five percent of respondents to a CNN poll last month said they disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the law. Trump has praised his conservative justices and their decision to overturn Roe as an achievement of his administration.
However, a KFF survey A study released in early March found that only 12 percent of voters said abortion was the most important issue for them in the general election.
But Democrats also say their ultimate argument to voters goes far beyond abortion and gives voters a choice between what Democrats say are their basic freedoms and the loss of those freedoms.
“Let’s just talk about freedom and democracy as we know it, because everything else you can imagine falls under that and everything hangs in the balance,” Seawright said, emphasizing the importance of Democrats at “Kitchen Table “-Topics played a pioneering role.
Democrats are also tired of over-reporting on Trump’s mountain of legal issues, even though some polls suggest a conviction in one of his criminal cases would turn off voters.
“This is such a ‘what if’ and it’s moving towards a ‘probably not,’ so I think it’s a very stupid mentality to have this as a silver bullet,” said Democratic strategist Jon Reinish, noting, that Biden The campaign has so far avoided addressing Trump’s legal problems.
A ABC News-Ipsos poll The study released last year found that 52 percent of Americans view the allegations against Trump in his New York hush money case as significant, while the latest ABC News-Ipsos poll released this month found that 16 percent of Trump supporters said a Being convicted of a felony would cause them to reconsider their support, while 4 percent said they would withdraw their support if that happened.
“Obviously this Manhattan case will be decided before the election,” Tranter said. “If he is convicted there, will it hurt him among some independents? Probably,” he added, warning that ultimately he doesn’t think a conviction would have much of an impact on voters.
One aspect of the race that hasn’t changed is Americans’ general dissatisfaction with the idea of a rematch between Biden and Trump. According to a AP-NORC poll in MarchOnly 21 percent of voters said they were enthusiastic about Biden, and 25 percent said the same about Trump.
Voters have also raised concerns about the age and cognitive health of the two candidates. The latest NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ poll found that 74 percent of voters have concerns that Biden’s age and cognitive health could affect his ability to serve as president, while 58 percent said the same about Trump.
One variable that could impact November is the emergence of a viable third-party candidate. The most competitive candidate so far has been Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who switched from the Democratic Party to the Independent Party earlier this year and was polling in the low double digits. Both Democrats and Republicans fear that Kennedy could withdraw support from their respective candidates, but of course what the ultimate impact of this will be remains to be seen.
“The vast majority of voters don’t want to see this movie,” Heye said, referring to the rematch between Biden and Trump. “It’s not so much that one of them could beat the other, but that one of them could lose to the other.”
