President Joe Biden is rising in polling pitting him against Donald Trump for a potential rematch in the 2024 presidential race.
Biden already indicated he is running for re-election, but Trump is delaying making his formal announcement — although he already made an inclination to run again fairly clear. Donald’s continued interest in garnering the public’s attention and his talk about what he would do if he becomes president again make his apparent intentions obvious. In an early September poll conducted in the days following Biden’s recent speech in which he warned Americans of the dangers of so-called “MAGA Republicans,” 48 percent of respondents picked Biden when asked if they would vote for Biden or Trump if the next presidential election was happening today. Just 42 percent picked Trump. The numbers, reflecting registered voters’ responses, are taken from Yahoo News/YouGov polling, which in late August found Biden leading Trump by just three percent on the question of respondents’ support for the 2024 presidential race.
Biden’s latest leading margin against Trump is the biggest in Yahoo/YouGov polling when survey participants were asked about 2024 since March. In the time since, Biden finally scored another specific legislative victory: the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats negotiated over for months before recently approving in the Senate as a budget reconciliation deal, which meant it didn’t need GOP votes. The sweeping initiative contains provisions supporting clean energy and healthcare affordability, alongside other measures. Yahoo notes that Democrats and independents showed particularly significant increases in their approval for Biden’s job performance in recent weeks. Democrats now approve at a rate of 79 percent — up by seven percentage points, while 32 percent of independents approve, which represents a six percent jump.
Similarly, more Dems now prefer Biden as the next nominee from the party for president over someone else, which wasn’t the case a month prior, per YouGov.
Another relevant factor is falling gas prices, which are contributing to an overall drop in recorded levels of inflation, although there’s still ground left to cover in potentially returning to price levels closer to those seen a year ago. To that end, Biden also recently signed a bill to provide U.S. government support for the semiconductor industry. Semiconductor chips are technological components used in a variety of products, and difficulties in obtaining the needed chips helped drive recent supply issues contributing to inflation. Unemployment, meanwhile, remains low, and Democrats also provide a simply striking contrast with what many Republicans are lately offering. The U.S. Supreme Court upended the national availability of abortion with its recent decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and Democrats quickly began seeking to lock down protections for abortion while Republicans used the opportunity for the opposite, meaning new restrictions.
