This year’s presidential election, more than any other in modern political history, is shaping up as a question of which candidate voters dislike least.
Opposition to Republican candidate Donald Trump has been part of the political scene since 2016, but political analysts say a growing Biden fatigue threatens to undercut Democrats’ most powerful weapon in the past three federal elections.
“Rather than anti-Trump, the migration is somewhere between anti-Biden or pro-Trump,” said Don Levy, director of the Siena College Research Institute.
He said Biden voters are significantly less energized than Trump supporters, which adds to President Biden’s other problem of being considered too old to be an effective president.
Less than 40% of Mr. Biden’s voters say his policies have helped them personally, and 83% of Mr. Trump’s supporters say he helped them.
Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address last week aimed at juicing Biden-weary voters. The president joked about his age, pointedly stayed well into the night after the speech to shake hands, and delivered a stark reminder to liberals about the dangers he sees in another Trump administration.
He also touted a positive vision of the country.
The problem, analysts said, is that Democrats often don’t see it the same way.
David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said voters aren’t feeling the accomplishments Mr. Biden has touted.
“The demographics that Biden needs to win in a landslide are not overwhelmingly coming home in the polling today. It may change,” he said.
Winning Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan will be challenging for Mr. Biden, Mr. Paleogos said. The president has not reenergized young voters and minority communities in large cities of these battleground states.
“Without that nucleus of a Black landslide in those urban areas, how do you win?” he said. “If you don’t come out of those cities with a big margin to offset the counties that are red, where else do you win in those states?”
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In head-to-head matchups, Mr. Trump outpaces Mr. Biden on issues at the top of voters’ minds, such as the economy, inflation and immigration.
Pollsters say the scene is a reversal from 2020 when an anti-Trump vote powered Mr. Biden to the White House.
Exit polling showed Mr. Biden outperformed Mr. Trump by 38 percentage points among voters who said they cast their ballots mainly out of spite for the alternative. They made up about a quarter of the vote.
Mr. Biden says many of those voters now have supported Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s chief opponent in the Republican presidential primaries.
“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters,” Mr. Biden said after Ms. Haley dropped out of the race. “I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign.”
Biden backers point to Ms. Haley’s significant share of the vote in states such as Virginia and New Hampshire as evidence that Mr. Trump’s party is full of skeptics.
Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said some Republican primaries allowed Democrats and independents to vote, meaning some Biden 2020 voters likely crossed over to support Ms. Haley.
“If we look at closed primaries where only Republicans could vote, her share was much smaller,” he said.
Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said polls show that the former president has nailed down Republican support in a major way and is outperforming Mr. Biden in battleground states.
“So whoever is selling that [anti-Trump] narrative is probably coming from another land of wishful thinking,” Mr. LaCivita said.
He pointed to a Siena College/New York Times poll this month that found Mr. Trump with a 48% to 43% lead over Mr. Biden among registered voters.
The poll found that 97% of the voters who said they backed Mr. Trump in 2020 are still in his corner. Just 83% of the voters who said they backed Mr. Biden in 2020 support him now.
Another 10% of Mr. Biden’s 2020 backers said they have hopped onto the Trump bandwagon. Mr. Trump also has an 11-point lead over Mr. Biden among voters who said they sat out the 2020 election.
“You have to give credence to the anti-Biden [sentiment],” Mr. Levy said.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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