President Joe Biden has not notched a polling bounce from former President Donald Trump‘s legal problems even though they underscore the contrast Democrats hope to draw if there is a rematch between the two next year.
Instead, Biden’s popularity depends more on the economy than Trump, pollsters say, as the incumbent embarks on a national sales tour to tout his economic record and the former president escalates his attacks on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is considering whether to indict him for covering up his hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
BIDEN TO HIT THE ROAD TO SELL VOTERS ON ECONOMIC RECORD IN CAMPAIGN-STYLE BLITZ
After eight years of Trump’s political dominance, it is relatively safe to assume his and Biden’s approval ratings “are impervious to any news surrounding the former president,” according to Monmouth University Polling Institute Director Patrick Murray.
“If an indictment happens and that leads to a shift in public opinion, that would be more unusual based on past experience,” Murray told the Washington Examiner. “But we will have to wait and see. In the meantime, I think Democratic voters are less focused on Trump in 2024 than they are on whether Biden himself is physically up to another campaign.”
To that end, Monmouth published a poll Monday that found only 1 in 4 Democrats want Biden to seek reelection. But overall, Biden’s average approval-disapproval is 43%-53%, per FiveThirtyEight. Ten days earlier, when Trump incorrectly predicted on social media he would be indicted last week, Biden’s approval-disapproval was 44%-51.5% amid the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, in addition to his administration’s decision to backstop most deposits held by those financial institutions.
If the investigation dominating headlines were a federal one, there might be more of a connection between Biden’s numbers and Trump, Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos contended. But Bragg’s inquiry into whether Trump committed a misdemeanor or felony by falsifying business documents to hide a crime — in this case, a campaign finance violation before the 2016 election — is not.
“He’s in single digits, net, in terms of his disapproval being only single digits higher than his approval, so relatively speaking, he’s very competitive,” Paleologos said of Biden. “The conventional wisdom is that short term at least, Trump will benefit because he’ll be front and center in the news and his loyalists, this will give his loyalists another reason to donate, organize, protest, volunteer, which strengthens Donald Trump in the primary.”
“Our polling indicates that Trump and Trump-endorsed candidates have a major problem with independent women,” he added. “I don’t think anything significantly has changed that calculus. Furthermore, how does Trump, as the nominee, if he were to become the nominee, how does he respond to the legal actions against him on the one hand? Secondarily, how does he convince independent women who hold Roe v. Wade as his responsibility because it was his appointments, really, that drove the overturning of Roe v. Wade? So a couple of major long-term political problems.”
Democrats have made the political calculation that speculation Trump will be indicted helps Biden and the party portray Republicans as “extreme” and undermine them as “MAGA.” That thinking takes into account how Biden beat Trump in 2020 and is better positioned to do it again next year, as opposed to in a matchup with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
“Donald Trump has made his career on winning in the court of public opinion,” one Democratic strategist said. “He has rarely, and I would argue never, had to win in the court of law. Now he needs to do both.”
Biden has an average 1 percentage point advantage over Trump, 45.3% to 44%, unchanged from a week ago, according to RealClearPolitics. When respondents are asked to choose between Biden and DeSantis, Biden has less than a point edge, 43.3% to 43%. Simultaneously, Trump is outpolling DeSantis for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination 44.3% to 29.2%, noting these are early surveys and DeSantis is not even a declared candidate.
For Paleologos, Trump could persuade independent women to vote for him next year, should he be renominated, if the economy, for example, dips into another recession.
“It could be a deep recession, and if that deep recession hits the end of this year or early next year, we’re in the election season,” he said. “That’s a scenario where I could see Trump would benefit. Because Trump could say, ‘When I was president, we didn’t have these problems. We didn’t have people being laid off. We didn’t have interest rates high. We didn’t have banks failing like this,’ and so on.”
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Biden will promote his economic achievements at semiconductor manufacturer Wolfspeed in Durham, North Carolina, on Tuesday, launching an administration-wide three-week 20-state “Investing in America” tour.
“While in North Carolina, President Biden will also highlight what’s at stake if MAGA Republicans in Congress get their way and repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and slash funding for manufacturing, research, and innovation to give tax breaks to the superwealthy,” a White House official said. “North Carolina — in addition to Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, and New York — is among the states that stand to lose the most private sector investment under MAGA Republicans’ reckless proposals.”
