Trump has received high voter intentions in opinion polls, as well as large donations.
- author, Katie Kay
- roll, US Special Correspondent
The US election race is on its head: what might be downward tends to be upward – at least as far as the two front-runners and their popularity are concerned.
The number of indictments against former Republican President Donald Trump in court continues to rise, as do his poll numbers in GOP primary polls and his donation pile.
The current president, Democrat Joe Biden, faces the opposite problem: he can’t get off the ground. No matter how the country performs, it does not rise in government opinion polls.
The “pedium economy” is failing voters
Biden presides over an economy that almost every country in the world envies.
Inflation is falling (at 3%, less than half that of the EU and the UK), unemployment is also low (3.5%), and recession fears are fading.
Americans are still under pressure from high interest rates and prices still above pre-Covid levels, but the president has been traveling around the US this summer to remind people that key parts of his agenda, such as lowering inflation and the CHIPS Act (the investment package in semiconductor production) and chips), has boosted government trillions of dollars in the US economy.
Biden does not appear to have much recognition for the economic recovery.
A recent Reuters poll showed that 54% of Americans disapprove of the US president’s action – in fact, that’s a few points worse than it was in March, when a recession seemed more likely and inflation was at its highest.
The current figure is also much worse than the 32% who disapproved of his record when he took office in 2021.
The economy gets better, and your poll numbers go down. Good news does not always bring good news.
Part of the problem for the Democrats is that many large government investment programs are still in the approval stages.
And the federal administration officials I spoke with are hopeful that as the money is distributed to projects across the country, “normal” functioning of politics will resume and people will begin to see the benefits of the Biden agenda.
This is why the White House called its plan the “bedium economy.” But there is a danger in that. If inflation rises again and the specter of recession reappears, the Republicans will have a useful catchphrase for Biden’s frustrated economic plans.
The bad news is not negative for Trump
On the other hand, Donald Trump faces the opposite situation: bad news is not bad news for him.
“If the question before voters is, ‘Should Trump be in jail or in the White House,’ Trump wins.”
That was the message I received from a Trump ally the night he was arrested in Georgia for meddling in the 2020 state election.
On Thursday (08/24), the former president entered a prison in Fulton County, Georgia, where he was photographed in one of the prisons. mugshot (Image of an accused or prisoner).
The bail was set at US$200,000 (about R$970,000) and he is expected to return to court later to present his defence. This is the fourth lawsuit in which Trump is a defendant.
Joe Biden’s government is trying to embellish its achievements in the economy with the title of “the pedium economy.”
In normal times, an indictment from the court that threatens jail time does not sound like good news for a presidential candidate.
But here’s the counterintuitive thinking of the Trump-aligned source I spoke with: “I could actually sell this a lot easier.” [risco de prisão] That “Biden is bad and does not deserve a second term.”
Surprisingly, people in Trump’s orbit think the former president’s legal status can be a good thing for them. Impressive, but in this upside down world, not entirely surprising.
Promising poll results and campaign donations suggest that Republican voters favor Trump despite, or perhaps even because of, his legal troubles.
His campaign members are betting that voters in hotspots across the country, like suburbs of Philadelphia and Milwaukee, will be so terrified at the thought of sending a former US president to prison that they will vote to restore Trump to power. The White House – perhaps hoping to escape legal troubles.
But it’s still too early to tell if this is how voters will really see things in November 2024.
Recent polls show that a majority of Americans think Trump committed a crime. The majority also says it will not vote for him.
“I think his team understands the danger they’re in now, but they want to maintain their dominance of the Republican Party,” says Anthony Scaramucci, who was briefly a communications adviser in the Trump administration.
“For this reason, they will keep him in the campaign for as long as possible, but I think he will eventually withdraw due to pressure from the courts and his family.”
This is not to say that voters are excited about Joe Biden. not. Even Democrats wonder if he’s too old to run for a second term.
One thing is certain about this campaign for the presidency of the United States: It will continue to bring extraordinary events.
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