Numerous polls, exactly a year before the US presidential elections scheduled for 2024, showed President Joe Biden’s decline in front of his rival, Donald Trump, and the rift between him and the very pessimistic American public opinion.
Joe Biden won in 2020 in each of these states that swayed in favor of one of the two parties.
The poll conducted by The New York Times with the Siena Institute showed that the 77-year-old Republican billionaire is ahead of his 80-year-old Democratic rival in voting intentions in Nevada (52%/41%), Georgia (49%/43%), Arizona (49%/44%), and Michigan, (48%/43%) and Pennsylvania (48%/44%), while Joe Biden is expected to win in Wisconsin 45%/47%).
The Trump campaign administration commented in a triumphant statement, saying, “Within a year, the American people will expel dirty Joe Biden and choose President Donald Trump to restore America to its greatness”.
Another poll conducted by CBS and published on Sunday showed Donald Trump leading in general voting intentions by 51% compared to 48% for Joe Biden.
Kevin Munoz, a campaign spokesman for Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, responded, “We will win in 2024 by putting in the work, not by worrying about a poll”.
He considered that expectations a year ago tend to become a little different within a year.
He mentioned opinion polls that predicted the defeat of former President Barack Obama by a large margin a year before his re-election in 2012.
But Democrat David Axelrod, the architect of the campaign that led to Obama winning a second term, believed that the results of the polls published on Sunday raised legitimate concern in the Democratic camp.
He wrote on X that “If Biden remains in the race, he will be the Democratic Party’s nominee”.
He added, “But he must decide whether it’s wise, and whether he is running based on his personal interest or the interest of the country”.
The polls published on Sunday, the results of which may not be decisive as they were conducted 12 months before the elections, reveal that the octogenarian president is unable to bridge the identity between himself and American public opinion.
The CBS poll reported that 73% of Americans believe that their country isn’t doing well, which is the highest percentage since the beginning of the year.
A poll conducted by ABC showed that 76% of Americans are convinced that their country is moving in the wrong direction.
This opinion is shared by 67 percent of those surveyed, published by the New York Times.
In this poll, 71% supported the idea that Biden is too incapable of being an effective president at the age of eighty.
Donald Trump’s age does not concern voters that much.
Therefore, public opinion is not affected by Joe Biden’s speech, which presents himself as the best to win again over Trump.
American citizens are concerned about their purchasing power, which is being eroded by inflation, and some of them fear seeing the United States dragged into a war abroad.
For his part, Joe Biden reiterates that he has never been so optimistic about America, praising the strong economy and the strong international alliances that he has established.
Experts generally confirm that foreign policy issues do not play a major role in the electoral decisions made by Americans.
But public support for Ukraine may erode, with no major military successes.
In addition, Biden’s position on the Israeli war on Gaza angers many young voters, as well as Americans of Arab origin, two groups that were supportive of him.
Thousands of people gathered in Washington on Saturday, demanding an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and some considered that Biden was committing genocide.
Biden stressed Israel’s right and duty to defend itself, and he has so far rejected calls for a ceasefire, stressing that he is working on a humanitarian truce.
Meanwhile the war in Gaza, and the US administration biased position with Israel and its violent attacks against civilians in Gaza.
Just year before the US presidential elections, Joe Biden faces the risk of losing the support of Arabs and Muslims communities in the United States, which may translate into tipping the balance in favor of the Republicans in swing states.
According to Arabs and Muslims communities in the United States, the US government isn’t putting enough pressure on its ally, Israel, to reduce the number of deaths among the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.
Since the beginning of the war, around 10,000 people, including 4,500 children, have been killed in Israeli bombing, according to the Hamas government that controls the Gaza Strip.
Israel on the other hand, approximately 1,450 people were killed in Israel, according to the Israeli army, most of them civilians who died on the first day of the Hamas attack.
According to an unofficial census, the Muslim community represents only 1.3% of the American population, with 4.5 million Muslims, however, the election will be decided by a few hundred thousand votes in a few states.
Therefore, the loss of Muslim votes in Michigan, Virginia, Georgia, and Arizona, the four states that Biden won in 2020, may cost him dearly next year.
According to a poll conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, 69% of Muslims voted for Joe Biden in 2020, compared to only 17% who voted for Donald Trump.
In addition, the disillusionment of some of these voters has been exacerbated by other reactions from Joe Biden.
It took the president five days to contact the family of an American child of Palestinian origin who was stabbed to death in Chicago.
He also publicly questioned the death toll provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health, even though international organizations consider it a reliable source.
In recent days, the White House softened its tone when it promised to adopt a strategy against Islamophobia, and Joe Biden showed more sympathy for the fate of the Palestinians.
