Biden’s In the Driver’s Seat and It’s No Longer Early - Rob Horowitz

Biden’s In the Driver’s Seat and It’s No Longer Early - Rob Horowitz

Joe Biden goes into the two-week period of the presidential campaign that will be dominated by the two major parties' nominating conventions in a strong position to defeat President Trump in November.  With 77 days to go until election day, President Trump still has time to turn it around, but it is rapidly slipping away, especially because early voting in some states begins in 30 days or so.

Presidential re-election campaigns are mainly referendums on the incumbent. That, in a nutshell, explains President Trump’s electoral difficulties.  His job approval rating, the number that most closely correlates to vote performance, is currently only 42%, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average of polls.   Nearly 55% of registered voters currently disapprove of the job the president is doing with a high percentage of those who disapprove, expressing strong disapproval.  The percentage of registered voters who disapprove of how he is handling the COVID-19 pandemic, the most important issue to voters, is even a bit worse.

Similarly daunting for the president’s campaign, only 25% of registered voters think the nation is “headed in the right direction” while 70% think “things are pretty seriously off on the wrong track,” according to the RealCear Politics average of polls.  Unlike in 2016, where voters who disliked Clinton and Trump, voted overwhelmingly for him, so far, this time, voters who dislike Biden and Trump, are breaking strongly for the challenger.

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In line with the rest of the polling, Joe Biden currently leads President Trump nationally by nearly 9%, 51.2% to 42.5 %, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average of polls.  It is closer in the battleground states, but Biden still has solid leads not only in the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin where Trump scored big upsets in 2016, but in Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina--all states that are must-wins for the president.  Ohio and Georgia--two states that if Trump was in better shape over-all he would have already put away--are currently neck and neck, forcing the Trump campaign to spend significant advertising dollars to keep them in the Republican column. These are dollars that they would much prefer to be spent elsewhere.

To date, Joe Biden has also proved to be an elusive target, making President Trump’s efforts to turn the election into more of a choice between the two candidates, rather than just a referendum on the incumbent, unsuccessful to date.  This is inherently a difficult task when one is the incumbent president, but the fact that former Vice-President Biden is relatively moderate, likable over-all and for most voters, well-qualified to be president, makes him difficult to demonize.  The ham-handed effort to say Biden has lost it and is nearly senile has not gained traction and risks backfiring because it creates a low bar for judging Biden’s performance in the debates and in media interviews; one he can easily clear.

Additionally, the choice of Senator Kamala Harris is not likely to change the overall trajectory of the race. Vice-presidential candidates almost never do as people by and large focus on the top of the ticket nearly exclusively when casting their vote. Harris is qualified, appealing and if past experience is any indication, will acquit herself well in the one debate against Vice-President Pence.  She will in all likelihood end up being a marginal plus for the ticket--which with the exception of a candidate who can deliver a swing state, of which the most recent example was 60 years ago when LBJ put Kennedy over the top in Texas--is the most that can be said of any vice-presidential candidate.

For President Trump to improve his odds of re-election, he must boost voters’ opinion of his job performance.  Even a belated effort to launch an effective national response to the coronavirus, for example, could pay electoral dividends.  

Joe Biden is not Donald Trump’s main obstacle to re-election.  The answer for the president lies with a hard and not totally admiring look in the mirror, followed up by a sustained course correction in how he is handling his job.  I wouldn’t count on it. But the plain fact that Donald Trump is president, proves there is at least some merit to the old adage that anything is possible.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.