This Monday marks the point when there are exactly nine months left until the United States presidential elections, to be held on November 5th, and things need to change a lot for Joe Biden, who has just turned 81 and is already the oldest president to have held the position, to turn around the opinion polls predicting a return of Donald Trump to the White House. The start of the Democratic primaries, held this weekend in South Carolina, have made clear the party's demobilization and its silent rejection of a new Biden mandate: the Democratic turnout dropped 75% compared to 2020.
Although it is true that Biden had no rival, since he crushed his two opponents by taking 96.2% of the vote, and such a situation always reduces voter participation, the demobilization of the Democratic grass roots was much greater than expected. A poll released this Sunday by NBC News gives him 37% of public support, about 20 points less than Trump, when Americans were asked to say which of the two was more capable of directing the US economy. Trump also leads Biden widely in immigration management (32 points) and physical and psychological abilities to govern (23 points). Because of all this, the NBC News chain concludes that Trump would win the election if it were held now by a five point difference (47% to 42%).
What's most troubling about Biden's situation is that, as the months go by, a sensation is being confirmed: Democrat voters have little confidence in the president, sometimes giving the impression that support for Trump has a lot to do with an incompetence attributed to the current occupant of the White House. He makes serious blunders with such regularity that it is impossible to ignore this impression. This is punished by young people and is reflected in issues such as the Gaza War, where only 15% of voters under the age of 35 approve of Biden's management and his fervent support for Israel.
The Trump threat is not an alarmist headline today, but rather, a real risk to the world's leading economy
Although this is just the raw poll data, such an electoral perspective on the horizon is, right now, much more a cause for concern than for satisfaction around the world. Today, the Trump danger is not a sensationalist headline today, but rather, a real risk to the world's leading economy. The populism he was seen employing in the past and his frequent anti-establishment policy, without being concerned if he strayed across the red lines of democracy - as in the invasion of the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021 - was a subject of a debate in the emblematic Davos Forum, the leading global meeting in which the economy is its central axis. The president of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, did not hesitate to affirm that a new Trump mandate would be a threat.