There is a significant amount of debate on the Republican side as to whether Donald Trump can win the general election in 2024, or whether the GOP’s only hope is Ron DeSantis. Depending on whose supporters you ask, the only one who can win back the White House is whichever candidate they’re currently backing.
Me? I think both Trump and DeSantis can win. Of course, anything can happen, and perhaps one gives us a better shot, but I think both candidates can defeat Joe Biden. Which is why I think the question that really needs to be asked is whether Joe Biden can actually win.
Polls have consistently shown that Democrats want someone besides Joe Biden as their nominee and that they think he’s too old and not physically or mentally capable of being president. His handling of the economy is widely panned, and, slowly but surely, his corruption is being exposed by the House Oversight Committee — that isn’t helping him either.
And according to the latest McLaughlin Poll, Biden would lose to Trump in an Electoral College landslide — despite the latest indictment in Georgia — 47% to 43%, which is up two percent just this month.
In fairness, McLaughlin & Associates was retained by Trump’s campaign as his official pollster, and many people are quick to dismiss polls retained by campaigns. But as the McLaughlin pollsters point out, they didn’t exactly tip the scales in Trump’s favor.
“Even more remarkable, with our voter model for this poll we assigned 4 more points of Biden 2020 voters than Trump 2020 voters,” write John and Jim McLaughlin at Newsmax. “This means looking to 2024 there is an 8-point turnaround in favor of Trump from the 2020 election. Biden voters are switching to Trump.”
That’s not even the most significant finding of the poll.
“In the key battleground states Trump leads Biden 49% to 41%,” the McLaughlins explain. “If the election was today, Trump would defeat Biden in an electoral landslide. Our poll – and other national surveys are confirming a huge turnaround for Trump. Remember, Donald Trump never won the popular vote in the 2016 and 2020 national popular vote, and almost all polls had him losing the popular vote in both elections. But now our poll and others show him leading.”
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They argue that this is the reason Joe Biden is using the power of the federal government to try to imprison Trump — which is probably correct. Granted, as Trump’s pollsters, they also assert that Trump “appears to be the only Republican candidate who can solidly defeat Joe Biden” and make the bizarre claim that Trump is “smartly running a campaign that is focused on defeating Joe Biden,” even though Trump has actually been focusing most of his attention and fire on Ron DeSantis.
But, the fundamentals nevertheless clearly show that America isn’t happy with Joe Biden. According to the McLaughlin poll, Biden has a 55% disapproval rating, compared to a 43% approval rating, and 72% of undecided voters disapprove of the job he’s doing. Solid majorities of the country think the nation is on the wrong track and believe the economy is getting worse, and a whopping 83% say they’ve been negatively affected by inflation. Trump also has the advantage on issues voters care about.
With numbers like these, can Joe Biden actually win?
I don’t think so.