Voters who support Donald Trump receive all the spotlight. However, the general election could be decided by Joe Biden.
Because Trump dominated the Republican primary early on, a historic rematch between the current president and the former president—a prospect that few Americans appear to be looking forward to—is taking shape.
Many in the academic, media, and political spheres have gone to great lengths since Trump’s 2015 election to try to decipher the “Make America Great Again” supporters’ ardent economic, ideological, emotional, and patriotic drives. Based on their degree of passion and changing political objectives, the more diverse groups of voters that supported Biden in 2020 could hold the key to November’s victory.
Biden is in for a challenging campaign, according to Democratic political operatives.
The ex-president’s base of Republican voters is large and ready to fight, and he has a considerably stronger political organisation than he had in 2020 or 2016, which he plans to use to attract even more followers. According to local Republican officials, Biden’s aspirations will be obstructed by the return of numerous Republicans who were turned off by the former president’s behaviour in 2020, but now have a more favourable impression of his administration and find the current president’s perceived progressive shift repulsive.
Democrats are becoming more worried about the longevity of the support base that propelled Biden to the presidency three years ago, which coincides with Trump’s meteoric rise despite his legal troubles and assault on democracy in 2021. Unlike in 2020, when he took advantage of the disorderly pandemic leadership of a president who wondered aloud if injecting disinfectant could cure COVID-19, this time Biden has deal with the complexities of being in office and be evaluated on his own record.
If Trump’s detractors are right that he poses a grave danger to free elections in the United States, then Biden will need the support of people from among the conventional Democratic coalition and outside if he is to defeat Trump in the reelection. The disillusionment or fraying of an unpopular president’s once-vast support base has alarmed his followers and given Trump a boost.
Protesters calling for an end to the fighting in Gaza have physically blocked Biden’s path to spreading his message about the general election on two separate occasions in the past two days. His backing for Israel’s reaction to Hamas terror assaults alienated certain progressive, young, and Arab American voters, who are crucial to Biden’s reelection campaign in swing states. Their rage crystallised this estrangement. Such voters’ decision to abstain from supporting Biden on this one topic could have far-reaching consequences.
Just hours after Trump won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, Biden’s main deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks claimed that Trump’s support was significantly larger and more strong than his possible rival.
President Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 should not be forgotten. In order to win over voters in battleground areas, Fulks said that it was necessary to form a diverse coalition that included people of colour, young people, suburbanites (particularly suburban women), and white working class and rural residents. “While Donald Trump has the support of his MAGA base, he is struggling to win over these key constituencies that will decide the election this November,” the author writes, referring to the GOP primary.
The intricacies of being in office
A complicated aspect of power is exemplified by the reaction to Biden’s handling of Israel. Any action taken by the president, whether domestic or foreign, carries the risk of negative consequences. In order to advance their own, at times contradictory, views while also advancing the nation’s interest, successful presidents are perpetually juggling competing priorities.
A case in point is Biden’s, at times, unsuccessful efforts to have the nation’s tens of billions of dollars’ worth of student loan debt forgiven. Younger, more progressive, and minority voters who are burdened with federal debts are in favour of these measures. However, in an effort to attract support from traditionally Democratic blue collar voters, Republicans portray these programmes as a handout that unfairly targets working Americans without a bachelor’s degree. The environment presents Biden with yet another delicate balancing act. Demoralising progressive and younger voters could be the result of inaction on climate change. For instance, in several crucial battlegrounds, Republican candidates are capitalising on popular scepticism over the usage and range of electric vehicles.
As he negotiates with Republicans to calm the southern border situation, the president must make another difficult political decision. Many in Biden’s coalition would consider it a betrayal if he were to accept the harsh asylum limits that liberals perceive as being similar to Trump’s policies. However, he must immediately address a political liability about a matter that is becoming more important in the approaching general election and has the potential to undermine his chances of being reelected. Before Christmas, Congressional Progressive Caucus chair and Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal warned that Biden may face electoral disaster if he made a compromise with Republicans on the matter.
According to Jayapal, in order for the Democrats to regain control of the House and the Senate, as well as for him to be elected president, they must form a coalition similar to the one they formed in 2020. A large number of young voters are part of that coalition. It has many people of colour, including immigrant voters, and the subject of immigration is very important to them.
The president’s dismal approval rating—which has remained at or below 40% for months—has stoked concerns about the longevity of Biden’s coalition, which is problematic ground for a president running for reelection. Polls taken last year exposed a vulnerability among the voters he needs to win over, exposing the potential that his base could break. For instance, among Black voters, Biden had a 73% to 23% lead over Trump in a November AWN survey. Still, in 2020, he triumphed over this group by a whopping 75 points. A mere four percentage points separated Biden and Trump among Latino voters, compared to thirty-three percentage points in the 2020 race. According to the AWN poll, the former president had a four-point lead among independent voters in 2019, but Biden ended up with thirteen points in 2020. Rather than these people defecting straight to Trump, Biden may face his greatest threat if they choose not to vote at all, which would reduce his crucial majorities.
You can’t afford to make any mistakes. The result was closer than it appeared, even though he easily won the Electoral College vote (306 to 232). Biden, for example, received over three million votes in Wisconsin, yet he only came out on top by around 20,000. He won Arizona by slightly more than 10,000 votes and Georgia by 11,700. If Biden’s lead in these states begins to erode, if any of his opponents defect to Trump or if no one turns up to vote, Trump might win the presidency again.
