American President Joe Biden was roasted by a public opinion poll a year before the fight for the White House, according to which he would lose to Donald Trump in almost all key states. According to the investigation, he is old, uncharismatic and does not understand economics. Even though the Democrats are still behind him, voices are starting to be heard more and more often that someone else should run.
The poll is alarming for a Democratic president. It shows that Biden is losing the support of mainly young Americans and is also gaining voters from ethnic minorities, whose votes his party has relied on for the last half century.
While most Americans don’t want a repeat of the last election’s presidential race next year, that’s exactly what it’s all heading towards. Trump is running for the party’s nomination in the primaries and has a clear lead over all other candidates. Biden, as the current president, is certain of the nomination, although several other not very influential Democrats are also trying to win it.
While it is tradition for the party to fully support its president in re-election, Biden’s performance and his declining support are raising concerns among influential Democrats about whether his campaign is being run well and whether the 80-year-old politician should even seek the White House again.
The uproar has been reignited by a new poll by the New York Times and Siena College, according to which Trump would defeat Biden in five of six key US states that can decide the election. In the American electoral system, it is not enough for the new president to be supported by the largest number of voters, he must win in the majority of individual states. At the same time, some are very loyal to the Republicans or, on the contrary, to the Democrats, and votes are at stake in only a few of them. And there Trump leads convincingly.
Concerns are justified
Andrew Yang, who lost to Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary, wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter): “If Joe Biden were to resign, he would go down in history as an outstanding statesman who defeated Trump and achieved great success. If decides to run again, it may go down as one of the biggest blunders of all time, leading us to a disastrous Trump second term.”
The president’s former rival is far from the only one. According to David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former strategist, Joe Biden’s decision to run again raises great doubts and concerns, The Guardian reminds.
After the poll was published, the Washington Post contacted a number of other influential Democrats who echoed similar dissonance, though many preferred to remain anonymous. “I’m concerned,” said Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, for example.
“I am troubled by the inexplicable credibility that Donald Trump seems to have, despite all the allegations, lies and incredible misconduct,” he added.
End of youth support
The reason for nervousness in the ranks of Democrats is mainly the disappearing support among African Americans, who helped Biden win in 2020. “People fundamentally misunderstood what the black vote meant three years ago,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. “The enthusiasm for Biden was never there. We were very pragmatic. We knew he had the best chance to beat Trump.”
But now about 20 percent of ethnic minority voters lean toward Trump, according to a New York Times analysis. This is completely unprecedented support since the civil rights movement, when black people stood up for the Democratic Party, which guaranteed them the right to vote.
The president’s support is falling the most among young people. Among non-white voters under the age of 45, both candidates now have similar levels of support. In the 2020 election, Biden won almost 40 percentage points more than Trump from this group. The same applies to the youngest voters under the age of 30, who historically were among the most liberal Americans and therefore clearly supported the Democrats.
According to the New York Times, the war between Israel and Hamas terrorists could also harm the current president. Biden, like his predecessors, supports the Israeli government. With the increasing number of dead Palestinians, however, more and more young liberals disagree with American foreign policy.
Not even Trump has won
It also didn’t help the president that after the Supreme Court intervened, he did not fulfill his campaign promise to forgive the debts of American college graduates. In the end, a large part of young and black voters will probably support Biden rather than Trump, but there is a risk that some of them will simply not come to the polls at all.
“Predictions more than a year ahead may not come true at all,” said Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz. He also noted that polls predicted a loss for President Barack Obama in 2012 and a Republican win in last year’s congressional elections.
At the same time, the voters do not want the return of Donald Trump to the White House. When asked whether they would vote for an unnamed Democrat or Trump, most said Democrat. But if they have to choose between Biden and Trump, the former president wins. According to them, the current one does not know how to govern and they do not like the state of the economy. Biden’s advanced age also raises concerns.
The fact that he is facing lawsuits in four different US states didn’t hurt Trump much either. If he returns to the White House, Democrats say he will seek revenge for his current troubles with the law. “We should be afraid. We should be terrified of what could happen,” added an unnamed Democratic Party strategist.
Tags: Democrats worried presidential election
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