There is amazing resiliency in former President Donald Trump’s support and alarming weakness in President Joe Biden’s.
Nine years after he burst onto America’s political stage, Trump’s support is virtually the same, and likely stronger, than it was in 2016 as he heads into a head-to-head rematch with Biden. In contrast, despite being the incumbent, Biden is running well behind his 2020 performance and even behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. Biden is on track for the worst Democratic presidential performance since Bill Clinton won 43% of the popular vote in 1992.
The RealClearPolitics average of national polling highlights that Biden and Trump are not simply two very different candidates but also have two very different bases of support. As for the candidates, Trump leads Biden 44.9% to 43.8%. As for the bases, Trump is just 2 percentage points below his 46.9% 2020 share of the popular vote. Biden is 7.5 percentage points below his 51.3% share of the 2020 popular vote.
A look at 2016’s presidential vote results is even more revealing about the two candidates’ bases. In 2016, Trump won 45.9% of the popular vote — just a percentage point below what he is polling today. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 48% of the popular vote, a figure Biden is more than 4 percentage points below.
The point is that Trump’s base is extremely resilient, while Biden is not even holding what Hillary Clinton won.
A look at the six battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where the 2016 and 2020 races were decided, reveals the same thing. Again, using RealClearPolitics averages of these states’ presidential polling, Trump’s average in these six states today is 47.1%, while his 2020 average in these was 48.6%. In contrast, Biden’s current average is 43.2%, and his 2020 average in these was 49.8%. Trump is just 1.5 percentage points below his 2020 battleground popular vote average. Biden is 6.6 percentage points below his.
The divergence in each state is also telling: Trump’s biggest drop from 2020 is 4.7 percentage points in Pennsylvania (and he is actually running above his 2020 numbers in Nevada by 1.3 percentage points). Biden’s smallest drop is 3 percentage points in Wisconsin (almost the same as Trump’s biggest drop). He is 6.9 percentage points below in Arizona, 8 percentage points below in Georgia, 8.5 percentage points below in Michigan, and 8.1 percentage points below in Nevada (and is not above in any).
The numbers are a testament to Trump’s staying power. In 2020, Trump increased his popular vote percentage from 2016. This is something no losing incumbent has done going back to the 19th century. In fact, losing incumbents have all lost ground in the popular vote when they lost reelection, usually by significant amounts.
They also almost never get to run again. Assuming Trump wins renomination (a virtual certainty), he will be the first defeated incumbent to be renominated by his party since Grover Cleveland in 1892.
The numbers are equally a testament to how fast Biden is fading. Yet, in doing so, he is actually reverting to past performance. Remember: Biden did not garner strong Democratic support in 2020, either. According to RealClearPolitics’s 2020 Democratic primary average polling, it was not until March 2020 that Biden finally broke the 50% threshold among Democrats. Even a month later, when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced he was dropping out of the race, Biden was only holding 60.8% of Democrats’ support.
One inescapable conclusion is that despite having been intensely in the national eye for almost a decade, despite everything that has been thrown at him (including two impeachments and four court battles now), and despite having lost the last election, Trump’s support is sticking with him to a remarkable degree. The other is that despite being the incumbent, Biden’s support appears to be as weak as it was when he was just seeking the nomination (after two previous failed attempts — in 1988 and 2008) among his own party faithful four years ago.
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As bad as this looks for Biden, things are even worse when a five-way race with third-party candidates is considered. In that field, Biden trails Trump 36.6% to 41.4%. Presuming proportional magnitudes of divergence in the all-important six battleground states, Biden is in dire political straits.
All elections, in the end, come down to one thing: turning out your base of support. As proven over almost a decade, Trump’s is sizable and resilient. As shown in just four short years, Biden’s was never as strong as victory made it seem, and now, it is fading fast. No wonder November’s election scares the dickens out of Democrats.
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023.