WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) — Voters here in North Carolina are nervous.
Will Rickard, a 49-year-old father of two, was among the hundreds of Democrats who stood and cheered. joe biden The first-term president recently gave an impassioned speech about the billions of dollars he has provided to protect the state’s drinking water.
But then the Wilmington resident admitted he was concerned about Biden’s political standing in his impending rematch with the former Republican president. donald trump.
Ricardo said of Biden’s coalition, “It lacks energy.” “I think people need to wake up and get moving.”
Exactly six months before Election Day, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are locked in a race that marks the first time in 112 years that a sitting and former president will compete for the White House. This race is both deep-rooted and highly fluid, as many voters are only just beginning to accept the reality of the 2024 race.
A war, a trial, Robert Kennedy Jr.’s independent candidacy, and deep divisions across America have injected unusual uncertainty into the race for the White House over who will become the oldest president in history to be sworn in on Inauguration Day. There is. At the same time, policy battles over abortion, immigration and the economy rage on Capitol Hill and statehouses.
no voters
Despite all evidence to the contrary, many voters believe that their respective parties’ presumptive nominees, Biden and Trump, will ultimately be on the general election ballot this fall. What is missing covers everything.
“I think our voters are going through a stage of grief about this election,” said Scott, who hosts regular focus groups with voters across the political spectrum as co-founder of Republican Voters vs. Trump. said Sarah Longwell. “They were in denial: ‘It can’t be these two, it can’t be these two.'” And I think they’re depressed now. I’m waiting for people to get approval. ”
President Trump is currently facing the first of four criminal trials, facing felony charges. The Constitution does not prevent a person from serving as president even if he or she has been convicted of a crime or is in prison.
Biden, who will turn 82 just weeks after Election Day on Nov. 5, is already the oldest president in U.S. history. Mr. Trump is 77 years old.
Privately, Democratic operatives close to the campaign continue to worry about Biden’s health and voters’ vague perceptions of it. In recent weeks, his aides have begun walking alongside Biden as he travels across the South Lawn of the White House to and from the presidential Marine One helicopter, clearly trying to hide the president’s stiff gait. It seems so.
Still, neither party has developed serious contingency plans. Whether voters want to believe it or not, the general election showdown is all but decided.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said many voters have not recovered from what he called the “knockdown, protracted battle” of the 2020 presidential election.
“A lot of them don’t wrap their heads around the fact that it’s actually a rematch,” Cooper said in an interview. “If that happens, I don’t think there’s any question that Joe Biden will win.”
Reaching 270 Electoral Votes — Battleground States
Even before voters start paying close attention, the political map of the contest for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the president is already taking shape.
Biden’s campaign is increasingly optimistic about North Carolina, a state he lost by just 1 percentage point in 2020. Overall, the Democratic president’s re-election campaign is focused on seven of the most important states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.
Mr. Trump campaigned in Wisconsin and Michigan last week, sending a clear signal that he wants to block Mr. Biden’s path to re-election through the Democratic Party’s Midwestern “blue wall,” but Mr. Trump’s team Little progress has been made on infrastructure development in battleground states.
Chris Lacivita, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said the president plans to invest new resources in at least two other Democratic-leaning states.
At a private donor retreat in Florida on Saturday, Lacivita said the electoral map would change to Virginia, given the Trump campaign’s growing optimism that both states are within reach. and discussed the campaign’s plans to expand into Minnesota.
“There’s a real opportunity here to expand the map,” Lacivita told The Associated Press. “The Biden campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads and ‘bragging ground battles.’ And they have nothing to prove it.”
The Biden campaign welcomed the Trump campaign’s spending in Democratic states. “The Biden campaign is going to be relentlessly focused on the path to 270 electoral votes, and that’s a sign of our commitment,” campaign communications director Michael Tyler said.
Biden is spending more aggressively on election infrastructure and advertising in the six months leading up to Election Day.
In the eight weeks since Trump effectively clinched the Republican nomination, the Trump campaign has spent virtually no money on TV ads, according to media tracking firm AdImpact. Outside groups aligned with Trump spent just over $9 million.
During the same period, Biden and his allies spent more than $29 million across Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to AdImpact research.
The Trump campaign has been unusually conservative, in part to avoid what appeared to be its failures in 2020, when the campaign essentially ran out of money and was forced to cut back on advertising in the critical final stages of the election. This is also because he is struggling to relapse. The appeal was filed because some funds were diverted to small donors and the former president’s legal defense.
Mr. Trump’s team claims it will soon ramp up advertising and on-the-ground infrastructure, but Lacivita declined to be specific.
Voters left with no choice
It is clear that Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump must work hard to improve their standing with voters.
Biden’s allies are publicly optimistic, but privately acknowledge that his approval ratings may be lower than Democrat Jimmy Carter’s at this point in his presidency. President Trump’s ratings aren’t that good.
Polls consistently show that voters do not like the 2024 option.
According to an AP-NORC Public Affairs Research Center poll conducted in March, about 1 in 10 Americans said they would be excited if Biden (21%) or Trump (25%) were elected president. There were only two of us. In the survey, only about a quarter of voters said they were satisfied with each item.
A recent CNN poll conducted in April found that 53% of registered voters said they were dissatisfied with the presidential candidate they had to choose from this year.
Another major wild card is Kennedy, a member of a storied political dynasty and an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who is running as an independent. Both major camps take him seriously as a potential spoiler, and Trump’s allies have significantly stepped up their criticism of Kennedy in recent days.
Biden’s plan.Remind voters of what the Trump era was like
For now, Biden’s team is most focused on reminding voters of President Trump’s divisive leadership. Three years after President Trump left office, some voters are wondering what the former reality TV star is doing in the Oval Office and what he thinks of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which was mired in legal jeopardy. I feel like I may have forgotten what it was.
“This plan is a reminder to voters of what life was like under President Trump, and a reminder that the current state of anxiety in the world is not actually the president’s fault. It also proves to voters that they can be steered by this president, Biden pollster Mary Murphy told The Associated Press. “They will trust his leadership and stewardship because they know that there is a strong relationship between the two.”
Biden’s team is also betting that the fierce backlash against new restrictions on abortion, which Trump and the Republican Party have largely championed, will sway voters toward Democrats, just as they did in the 2022 midterm elections and 2023 state elections. ing.
But Biden’s success comes at a time when enthusiasm lags among key voting bases such as Blacks, young voters and Arab Americans who are dissatisfied with the president’s handling of the Gaza war. It will also depend on whether the coalition government that won in 2007 can be reassembled.
Trump’s plan: Turn legal predicament to advantage
Trump has been forced to adapt his campaign to his first criminal trial in New York. Prosecutors allege that Trump committed financial fraud to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had a sexual relationship with him. He denied her allegations and maintained her innocence.
For now, Trump is forced to attend court most weekdays. A verdict is probably still weeks away. And after that, he will face the possibility of further trials related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents. The Supreme Court is considering whether President Trump should be granted immunity or partial immunity for actions he committed while in office.
Over the past week, Trump has suspended campaigning around court dates and rallied voters in Wisconsin and Michigan, states where the abortion debate has raged.
President Trump appeared to be looking for ways to ease the political pain caused by the turmoil over the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturn of the nation’s abortion rights. The former president suggested the issue would ultimately unite the country as each state enacts different laws.
“If we don’t win the election, there’s going to be a lot of bad things going on in terms of taxes and everything else besides the abortion issue,” he told Michigan voters.
The Trump campaign has privately argued that the unprecedented trial in New York will dominate news and voter attention for the foreseeable future. His campaign largely stopped trying to spread unrelated news during the trial.
Even if Trump is found guilty by a New York jury, his advisers argue that the fundamentals of the election will remain the same. President Trump has actively worked to undermine public confidence in the charges against him. The Trump team’s view, however, is that more traditional issues, such as persistently high inflation and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, work in Trump’s favor.
Lacivita said these issues always feed into Biden’s weaknesses, as “the news of the day just keeps getting worse.”
Ethnic dynamics will continue to change dramatically, based on a variety of factors, from the fate of the economy and the wars in Gaza and Ukraine to trends in crime and immigration, and other anticipated events. Both sides seem to agree that it’s a possibility. Candidate debates this fall could also be a wild card.
Dan Kanninen, Biden’s battleground state director, said the uncertainty could work in Biden’s favor.
“This dynamic is both a challenge and an opportunity for us, because we can build the resources, infrastructure, and operations to engage voters across these difficult waters,” he said. “There is.”
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Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Lynley Sanders in Washington and Michelle L. Price in Freeland, Michigan, contributed to this report.