Joe Biden’s tour of swing states fails to close poll gap

President easily secured Democrat nomination but needs a big turnaround to stop Donald Trump regaining the White House.

Dogged by dismal approval ratings, President Joe Biden has continued a tour of key swing states as he tries to claw back Donald Trump’s lead in the battlegrounds that will decide the race for the White House.

Despite easily securing the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Mr Biden now faces the tougher task of trying to convince the US public he should have a second term.

In the past week he has toured the states that once again hold the keys to the White House: Pennsylvania, Georgia and New Hampshire. He was in Wisconsin on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) and will travel to Michigan on Thursday, seeking to shore up the fragile coalition that carried him to victory in 2020.

Despite a fiery State of the Union address last week, most opinion polls show him trailing Mr Trump in all the key states, with voters consistently voicing concerns that, at 81, he is too old to serve a second term – not helped by a string of gaffes. His approval rating sank to a low of 37.4 per cent after the speech.

“How much political trouble is President Joe Biden in?” the New Hampshire Journal asked.

“So much that he came to New Hampshire.”

Noting the state had only voted Republican once in the presidential election since 1988, the newspaper added: “A Democrat who feels the need to campaign in the Granite State is like a PGA pro who wants a practice round before a game of mini golf.”

Mr Biden’s whistlestop tour aims to bring new energy to his re-election battle and prove to voters he can handle the daily rigours of the campaign trail and, by extension, the presidency. Flanked by wife Jill, who is beloved by the party faithful, Mr Biden now peppers his stump speech with cracks about his age.

“Look, I’m not a young guy, that’s no secret,” he joked in a new campaign advert at the weekend, part of a multimillion-dollar blitz targeting the swing states. “But here’s the deal: I understand how to get things done for the American people.”

Democrat strategists insist Mr Trump’s lead will evaporate as the campaign unfolds and the choice facing voters will be brought into sharper relief as the former president’s legal troubles come to a head. Mr Trump, 77, could be a convicted criminal by the time he accepts the Republican nomination at the party’s convention in July, with his trial over hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election set to open in New York this month.

The rematch between Mr Trump and Mr Biden is the first in a presidential election since 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower defeated Democrat Adlai Stevenson, having beaten him four years earlier. Opinion polls consistently show a majority of Americans are unenthused by a repeat of the 2020 race between two of the oldest presidents in US history.

In speeches this week Mr Biden has sought to bridge that divide with an appeal to moderate Republicans and independent voters, and a call for a return to civility in politics and public life. Democrat strategists believe this appeal will resonate with moderate conservatives who backed Mr Trump’s rival, Nikki Haley, throughout the Republican primary race.

The former South Carolina governor dropped out last week but her consistent strength among college- educated suburban voters confirmed that Mr Trump and his hardline MAGA movement remain politically toxic to a crucial demographic that deserted him in 2020. Even after dropping out, Ms Haley, 52, still won 13 per cent in the Georgia primary, exposing a weakness for Mr Trump in the state Mr Biden won by 12,000 votes in 2020. In an exit poll in North Carolina last week 80 per cent of Haley voters said they would not vote for Mr Trump.

THE TIMES