The Latest 2024 “Trump v. Biden” Polls From 32 States, Including All Battlegrounds, Don’t Show What You Think

Major media has almost universally declared Donald Trump’s political career dead in the wake of the 2022 midterm elections. But the most recent polling forecasting the 2024 election says otherwise.

Introduction

The universal sentiment among those who love American democracy is that it would be best for the United States if Donald Trump’s political career were over. And in the last week, this pro-democracy wing has been joined in this particular sentiment—for the first time in seven years—by leading members of the Republican Party, who were not much affected in the past, emotionally or otherwise, by Trump’s numerous federal felonies or his betrayals of America. They apparently draw the line at losing elections, however.

This sudden concordance of disparate views and interests has inspired major-media outlets the nation over to hold B-block symposia in which anchors and their selected guests opine that Donald Trump’s days as the leader of the GOP have come to a close.

Except that there’s no hard evidence to support this supposition. None whatsoever.

Indeed, amidst all the jolly major-media wishcasting, Republican Party hypocrisy, and left-wing jubilation in evidence on television and in the pages of the nation’s papers over the past week, one simple fact seems to have been lost: independent (that is, non-partisan) polls have consistently shown two things at odds with the current conventional wisdom:

1. Republican voters have not abandoned Donald Trump, and indeed he continues to lead potential 2024 GOP presidential-nomination challengers by a wide margin.

2. Voters, albeit by a narrow margin, appear to prefer Donald Trump to Joe Biden when confronted with a hypothetical 2024 presidential ballot in which the two men are the sole options before them.

Sure, both of these circumstances may be temporary, but that doesn’t mean they can be ignored. And as Donald Trump plans to announce his third presidential run from Mar-a-Lago tonight—on November 15, 2022, in other words a full seven months earlier than his announcement during the 2016 presidential election cycle—many people covering tonight’s event are likely to try to miscast the current state of affairs either (once again) via wishcasting or, at best, by citing one or two battleground-state polls implying someone other than Trump may win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

But that’s not what the bulk of the current 2024 presidential polls show.

Here then, below, are what the polls are currently telling us as Trump launches his 2024 presidential bid. And the message they carry is an unambiguous one: barring a massive and wholly unforeseen shift in the Republican electorate (which at present exhibits sentiments about Trump wholly out of keeping with those of their leaders in Washington), Trump is very much on track to once again be the Republican standard-bearer in 2024. And for all that it doesn’t make any sense to those of us who remember the Trump presidency and are daily struck by how much more competent Joe Biden’s administration has been, a 2024 Trump-Biden election could manifest as an unholy combination of Trump’s 2016 and 2020 performances: a win for the Republicans in the Electoral College, coupled with another loss in the (sadly irrelevant) national popular vote.

Indeed, since it’s the Electoral College that decides who sits in the Oval Office, we must clearly say—harrowing as the prospect is—that right now Donald Trump is the front-runner to become the next President of the United States. And no amount of blithe wishcasting in the coverage of his big speech tonight can render it otherwise.

{Note: After the results of the midterm elections, many people are rightfully circumspect about recent polling. But what readers should remember is that, as the New York Times recently revealed, independent pre-midterms polls were actually fairly accurate—it was the partisan polling that was predictably bad. So those disinclined to read or acknowledge or credit any political polls right now can be forgiven for this sentiment, but should nevertheless reserve their ire for partisan polling firms, not the sort of polls catalogued here. Just so, while every poll has a margin of error, even the margins of error for the polls cited and linked to below would—at best—only change the polling result in four states, with two “red” states possibly going blue, one “blue” state possibly going red, and a currently tied state going in one of those two directions (though we know not which). Note also that while these polls were taken pre-midterms, post-midterms polls confirm that voters do not seem to be blaming Trump for the result of an election in which he was not on the ballot in the way Republican elites and major-media journalists [quite understandably] are. So if your expectation is that post-midterms state polls will exhibit a dramatic shift away from Mr. Trump, you’re likely to be disappointed.

Remember too that, unlike the midterm elections—in which neither Trump nor Biden were officially on the ballot, the polls below are exclusively head-to-head matchups involving the two men and no one else. It’s in this context that Biden’s popularity ratings being underwater in 44 states comes into play in a big way. So it would be a mistake to confuse the midterm election results with a hypothetical future matchup between two men who did not run in 2022.}

Article Key

🟥 = Donald Trump leads in the poll.
🟦 = Joe Biden leads in the poll.
🟪 = Trump and Biden are tied in the poll.

The Most Recent 2024 Trump v. Biden Polls in 32 States

The state polls below(*) are ranked from the best polls for Mr. Trump to the best polls for Mr. Biden.