As the economy continues to grow and support for impeachment dwindles, President Trump’s reelection is looking more and more likely.
A new IBD/TIPP poll has Trump leading every Democratic candidate except front-runner Joe Biden, who leads the president by 5 points.
Compare the results to last month’s IBD poll. In that survey, Biden led Trump by 10 points, and Elizabeth Warren beat him by 8 points. Now, Trump is leading Warren by 4 points and cutting into Biden’s lead.
If there’s one thing 2016 taught me, it’s that polls are rarely trustworthy. But to its credit, the IBD/TIPP poll had one of the only accurate predictions in 2016. While every other poll concluded that Hillary Clinton would beat Trump by a wide margin, IBD/TIPP warned that the race would be close, with Clinton at 42% and Trump at 40%. That’s not at all far from the national popular vote result.
No poll is perfect, but this month’s results do seem to reflect a common sentiment across the electorate. The Dow Jones Industrial Average’s recent surge has left investors content, and the gradual economic growth in important swing states will undoubtedly influence these regions more than Washington’s political maneuvering.
Many of the blue-collar workers who turned out for Trump in 2016 did so for economic reasons. Regardless of whether Trump is directly responsible for the recent economic boom, many of these voters will attribute it to his presidency for the same reason they associated the 2008 recession with former President George W. Bush.
Impeachment, too, has soured in the swing states. A recent New York Times poll showed Trump taking leads in key states such as Florida, Wisconsin, and Michigan, a data point consistent with the idea that Democrats took things too far, as my colleague David Freddoso wrote at the time.
Biden is still the most popular Democratic candidate, hairy legs and all. Unlike Warren and Bernie Sanders, he appears to be reasonable, and his support has yet to drop. The individual faults of the Warren and Sanders campaigns have certainly contributed to their recent drops, but Biden’s narrowing lead proves that this isn’t a problem with any individual Democrat — it’s a problem for all of them.
