What Polls Tell Us About the State of the 2024 Race

As Republicans head into the second day of their convention in Milwaukee, they are energized. They feel jubilant about their chances of winning in November and furious about the near-assassination of former President Donald Trump — an event many of them view as the natural consequence of what they see as hyperbolic rhetoric about the threat Mr. Trump poses to the country.

Meanwhile, many Democrats are despondent. Serious concerns about President Biden’s electoral hopes loomed even before the events of the weekend transpired. Mr. Biden’s advanced age and attendant campaign trail challenges remain. And now the iconic images of a bloodied Mr. Trump, fist in the air, seem to have raised Democrats’ concerns that they have no good options, only a slow march toward defeat.

I admit it feels a bit uncomfortable to dwell on the Biden-Trump horse race given the gravity of current events, but there’s still an election coming up, no matter what, with early voting set to begin in some states in September. And a flurry of polls released in the last few days — while not capturing the impact of the tragedy in Pennsylvania on voter opinion — offer valuable insight into the rigidity of the presidential contest.

In the initial aftermath of Mr. Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate, I was adamant that this was not simply “one bad night” and that there would be serious damage done to his standing with voters on questions of mental acuity and ability to serve. At the same time, with so many of Mr. Biden’s voters fiercely opposed to Mr. Trump returning to power, I suggested that we might actually not see polls move too much. Mr. Biden “may also be inoculated from a sudden polling decline of more than a few points because of the way our current deep polarization has frozen our politics,” I wrote in the week after the debate.

Much of the polling since then seems to have borne out that thesis. The results have been poor for Mr. Biden but are not catastrophic: Fox News’s and NBC News’s polling each show Mr. Trump ahead by only three points nationally. CBS News’s weekend polling release showed Mr. Trump ahead across all key swing states, but by only a two-point margin in six of the seven states. Times/Siena polling released Monday paints a similar picture; being down by three points in the swing state of Pennsylvania does not mean the race is out of reach for Mr. Biden.

I don’t want to sugarcoat things for anxious supporters of Mr. Biden, though. At the moment, the numbers are bad for your candidate. The likelihood of a Trump victory is considerable. Voters believe that Mr. Trump’s policies made them better off, they trust him more on key issues like the economy, and though a significant number of Mr. Trump’s voters view him unfavorably, Mr. Biden’s advantage on favorability has effectively evaporated. Only 28 percent of voters think Mr. Biden has the mental and cognitive ability to serve as president, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll. Mr. Biden’s diminished ability to persuade people he is up to the job may grow only worse as Election Day approaches.