2024’s remarkably, stubbornly stable race — for now
The Biden-Trump contest has been remarkably stable — and remarkably competitive — with what movement there's been coming within the margin of error.
The good news for President Joe Biden in our new national NBC News poll is that it appears he’s climbed out of the political hole he was in this winter: His overall approval rating is up 5 points from January, and he now trails former President Donald Trump by just 2 points among registered voters, down from a 5-point deficit three months ago.
The bad news for Biden is that his current political standing is back to where it was in the fall of 2023, when his re-election prospects were already on shaky ground.
It underscores an important point about 2024's presidential election with six months to go: The Biden-Trump contest has been remarkably stable — and remarkably competitive — with the movement coming within the margin of error.
Take the two-way ballot between Biden and Trump, for example. Over the course of almost a year, Trump’s percentage has been stuck between 45% and 47% of registered voters, matching his share of the popular vote in both the 2016 and the 2020 elections. Biden’s percentage, meanwhile, has hovered between a high of 49% in the summer of 2023 and a low of 42% in January.
Or look at Biden’s approval rating, which has consistently been below 45% since the start of January 2023, and which hit a low of 37% in the first month of this year. It’s now at 42% in our latest poll.
Rating: 5