Biden’s campaign says he is doing well. Post-debate polls say otherwise.

President Joe Biden in recent days he has stated that he has a great chance of being re-elected, but polls in key states show that the presidential race is leaning towards the former President Donald Trump.

The shift is especially pronounced in Pennsylvania, where he followed Trump in every poll conducted since Biden’s poor performance in the June 27 debate.

He insisted that things are fine.

“If you look at all the polling data, the polling data shows a lot of different things, but there’s not a huge difference between us,” Biden said Lester Holt of NBC News on Monday. “It’s essentially a close race.”

But Biden is more optimistic affirmation in a Saturday meeting with a group of moderate House Democrats — who he has led in the last three national polls by four points — is simply incorrect. In national polls, Biden went from being tied with Trump to trailing him by 2 percentage points.

“He is in a significantly worse position today than he was the day before the debate,” said Lakshya Jain, co-founder of the democratic polling and analytics firm Split Ticket, which does not have any political clients. “The debate was supposed to be the turning point — and it was, but in the wrong way for Biden.”

At the same time, although Biden’s Democratic detractors were counting on a dramatic shift in public opinion to help convince him to step aside, they did not receive it. Biden’s drop in the polls was very incremental, leaving him within the margin of error in the Great Lakes states of Michigan, Wisconsin It is Pennsylvania – the three states most essential for victory in November. There was even at least one set of decisive state polls – conducted by Bloomberg News and Morning Consultation in early July – this showed Biden gaining ground on Trump since the debate, although still trailing him in the seven swing states surveyed.

“Trump is the favorite, but it’s not an ‘over’ race,” said Avery James, a data research analyst at Echelon Insights, a major Republican firm that does not currently have any active clients in the presidential race. “This was helpful to Biden’s inner circle in securing him the nomination. They can basically look at this and say, ‘Oh, the damage isn’t that bad.'”

In a polling memo Saturday, Biden deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said polls since the debate showed the race was tied.

“We’ve said from the beginning that this will be a close race, and that’s why we have a campaign designed to win a close race,” Fulks wrote, pointing to the campaign’s plans for $50 million in TV ads this month, more 2,000 employees coordinated in swing states, which he described as “an operation that dwarfs Trump’s.”

Meanwhile, several Democrats in Congress are so worried about Biden’s defeat that they said he should step aside so someone else can be the party’s nominee. So far, 18 House Democrats and one Senate Democrat have said Biden should withdraw — less than 10% of all Democrats on Capitol Hill.

“The latest data makes clear that the political danger for Democrats is increasing,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) wrote in a op-ed calling for Biden to drop out of the race. “States that were once strongholds are now Republican-leaning.”

No lawmaker has made similar announcements since the assassination attempt on Trump on Saturday, an event that also prompted the Biden campaign to halt its advertising and communications.

On Tuesday, however, new signs of Democratic discontent emerged when lawmakers began circulating a letter asking the Democratic National Committee to postpone a planned virtual roll call that would allow Biden to formally secure the nomination before the party convention next month. . The letter warned that the virtual call could begin this weekend.

“Some of us have called on President Biden to step aside, others have urged him to stay in the race, and still others have deep concerns about the state of the president’s campaign but have not yet taken a position on what should happen,” the statement said. . letter said: according to a draft obtained by Axios. “We all, however, agree that stifling debate and prematurely ending any possible change in the Democratic ticket through an unnecessary and unprecedented ‘virtual roll call’ in the coming days is a very bad idea.”

The DNC scheduled the virtual vote in May so that Biden’s name could be on the ballot in Ohio, which requires parties to nominate their presidential candidate 90 days before the general election – a deadline that ends on August 7, more than two weeks before. the Democratic convention in Chicago on the 19th. In May, the Ohio legislature passed a law to postpone the deadline, but DNC ​​officials said the solution will not take effect in time because the legislation was not passed on a “emergency”.

“This election comes down to nothing less than saving our democracy from a man who said he wants to be a ‘dictator from day one’ – so let’s certainly not leave the fate of this election in the hands of MAGA Republicans in Ohio , who tried to keep President Biden out of the general election,” DNC Chairman Jamie Harrison said in a statement. “We look forward to nominating Joe Biden via a virtual call and celebrating with fanfare together in Chicago in August alongside the 99 percent of delegates who support the Biden-Harris ticket.”

But Ohio election officials insist the matter is resolved, and some Democrats do not believe early roll call voting is necessary to prevent Biden from being excluded from the vote in Ohio. Rep. Andy Kim (DN.J.), his state’s Democratic Senate candidate, told reporters Tuesday that he didn’t understand why Democrats needed a virtual call before the convention because the Ohio Legislature had taken action .

“They would have to actually explain to me why it is necessary to move forward with something like this before the convention,” Kim said.

Kim has not said whether he thinks Biden should remain the candidate.

“That’s the president’s decision as the presumptive candidate,” he said.

Part of Biden’s problem is that he was fighting Trump before the debate — and voters doubts about his age were one of the main reasons. Biden trailed Trump in all but one of the six swing states in May polls conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.

Their numbers in the most racially diverse states of Nevada, Georgia and Arizona were especially poor in these polls, reflecting attrition among black and Latino voters. Trump’s leadership in threeSun BeltStates remains at or above the margin of error, which helps explain why there has been so much focus on Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the race remains tighter but Biden is still the underdog.

What’s more, Biden’s suggestion that the polls are no longer reliable may find a receptive audience within the Democratic base, but it doesn’t actually pass muster.

“I carried a lot of Democrats the last time I ran in 2020. Look, I remember them telling me the same thing in 2020. ‘I can’t win. The polls show I can’t win,’” Biden said in an interview on July 5 with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News.

Biden also told Stephanopoulos that predictions of a “red wave” did not materialize during the 2022 midterm elections.

In 2020, Biden underperformed in both national survey It is state-level battleground polls before the election. And in 2022, pre-election polls – contrary to experts’ predictions – were surprisingly accurate.

“The error of the past does not predict the future, and the error goes both ways,” said Jain, who supports Biden’s withdrawal. “It’s just not a good idea to say, ‘Well, the data is going to be wrong and that’s why we think we’re in a good position.’”

But the polls remained close enough for Biden to appear plausible to rank-and-file Democrats who aren’t as up on the details. And the more oxygen consumed by discussions about the polls, rather than, say, a steady drumbeat of calls for Democratic elected officials to recall, the better off Biden will be, according to James.

“If the debate continues around the polls, then Biden will likely have [the nomination] locked,” he predicted.

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