We have good news for President Joe Biden National NBC News survey He appears to have broken out of his political hiatus this winter: his overall approval rating is up 5 points from January, and he now trails former President Donald Trump by just 2 out of 5 points among registered voters. cuts three months ago.
The bad news for Biden is that his current political position is back to where his re-election prospects are already shaky in the fall of 2023.
It underscores an important point about the 2024 presidential election six months away: The Biden-Trump contest has been remarkably stable and remarkably competitive — the move has come within the margin of error.
Take, for example, the bipartisan vote between Biden and Trump. For nearly a year, Trump’s percentage has hovered between 45% and 47% of registered voters, matching his share of the popular vote in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. Meanwhile, Biden’s percentage fluctuated between a high of 49% in the summer of 2023 and a low of 42% in January.
Or look at Biden’s approval rating, which has been consistently below 45% since early January 2023 and reached 37% in the first month of this year. In our latest survey, it’s 42%.
Or check out the nearly identical favorability ratings for Biden and Trump:
- Biden: 38% favorable, 52% unfavorable (negative 14 net rating)
- Trump: 38% favorable, 53% unfavorable (negative 15 net rating)
Or take the names at the top of the ticket out of the equation and list the fixed preferences of the congress in the poll. Currently, 47% favor a GOP-controlled Congress in a new NBC poll, compared to 46% who want Democrats. The parties have been locked in this competitive position for years: Since August 2021, the GOP lead has not moved more than 2 points in either direction in an NBC News poll, while the Democratic lead has fallen outside that range once.
So despite all the news, developments and drama that has happened over the past year, this race has hardly budged. And it is extremely close.
But a new NBC News poll also points to at least three potential wild cards that could upend that stable.
The first is Trump’s criminal case in New York. Although he has numerous criminal charges and legal problems helped In 2023 and earlier this year, NBC polled Republican primary voters finds 50% of voters say he is being held to the same standards as anyone accused of such a crime, while 43% believe he is being unfairly targeted.
The majority saying Trump is held to the same standard as everyone else is higher than Biden’s vote share in a head-to-head matchup with the former president. Bottom line: The legal challenges don’t seem like a political winner for Trump with the general electorate — at least not yet.
Another potential wild card is third-party audio. For months, the conventional wisdom has been that the bigger the size of the third-party voice, the bigger it is It would be worse for Biden. If the third-party vote is more than 6%, that may still be the case, given Trump’s consistent 46% to 47% vote share translates into winning percentage.
However, our NBC News survey shows Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Trump is now more offended than Biden.
And the final wild card is the final voter turnout in the 2024 presidential race. Like our survey findsthe level of high interest in this contest is at a near 20-year low, indicating that voter turnout in November may be significantly lower than in 2020.
Given that more Republicans (70%) than Democrats (65%) have strong interest, according to an NBC News poll, does lower turnout help Trump?
Or does it help Biden, given that many of the voters who say they support Trump are voters who did not participate in the 2020 or 2022 midterm elections?
All these are the reasons why a stable race can quickly become unstable and unpredictable.