Donald Trump is now behind Joe Biden
President Joe Biden is leading former President Donald Trump in the polls, but the 2024 election is still months away.
The Economist’s polling average shows that, as of Tuesday, Biden leads Trump 45 percent to 44 percent.
Though Biden led Trump for a large portion of 2023, this current outcome marks the first occasion since September in which the president has been ahead of his opponent.
A repeat of the 2020 election is scheduled for March 12, when Biden and Trump both formally obtain the required number of delegates to be regarded as their parties’ presumed nominees.
Despite his approval rating hitting an all-time low following his State of the Union speech earlier in March, Biden has gained ground in the polls.
According to at least three surveys released in March, Biden will defeat Trump in November’s election.
Biden led Trump 46 percent to 45 percent in a nationwide survey done by Public Policy Polling and published by The Hill on behalf of the Democratic SuperPAC Progress Action Fund. But with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points, there was a statistical tie between the two contenders.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos survey of 3,356 registered voters, which was done between March 7 and 13, Biden would get 39% of the vote and Trump would get 38%. There was a 1.8 percentage point margin of error.
In the meantime, Biden received 45% of the vote and Trump received 44% of the vote in a Civiqs/Daily Kos survey of 1,324 registered voters. The margin of error for that survey, which was conducted between March 9 and March 12, was plus or minus 2.8 percent.
Other surveys, meanwhile, suggest that Trump might retake the White House in November. In a YouGov and The Economist survey of 1,367 registered voters, which was conducted between March 10 and 12, the former president received 44% of the vote against Biden’s 42%. There was a 3.5 percent margin of error for the survey.
Trump is being investigated for crimes in four states and at the federal level as he tries to retake the White House. He has denied any misconduct and entered a not-guilty plea to all allegations.
In order to keep the charges from going to trial before the election in November, Trump and his attorneys have attempted to do so.
The trial of one New York case, which accuses Trump of forging financial documents pertaining to cash given to an adult film star in order to conceal claims of extramarital sex, was scheduled to start on March 25. It has been postponed until at least the middle of April.
More than six months remain until the election, and experts have stated that it is still too early to declare a winner.
“I wouldn’t completely disregard polls at this point in the campaign, but I would approach them cautiously,” Northeastern University political science professor Costas Panagopoulos told Newsweek.
The closer Election Day draws nearer, the more accurate the polls are at predicting the final results. Polls taken after Labor Day will often be more informative,” he said.
According to Panagopoulos, early polls might be helpful “for tracking trends or reactions to campaign developments.” As of right now, the early poll trajectory likely tells us that this is going to be a close contest. That’s something, even though it might not be very satisfying. Anyone can play this game.
The director of University College London’s Center on U.S. Politics and associate professor of political science, Thomas Gift, told Newsweek that “an objective overview of the polls at this point suggests that Trump and Biden are in a virtual dead heat.”
“What matters, of course, isn’t national averages, but how the candidates are expected to fare in key battleground states,” Gift stated.
“The most recent Economist averages are encouraging for Biden, and he’ll take any lead he can get,” he continued. The lead is still quite narrow and well within the error margin.”