- While President Joe Biden continues to lag behind former President Trump in national and battleground state polls, his poll numbers are even worse on several key issues he’ll need to gain ground on to win reelection.
- Biden is polling behind Trump on key questions on who voters benefited from most while in office, who they trust to handle top issues and who they believe is best fit to serve another term, according to recent polling.
- “All of these polls point to voters having already decided against Biden on the current merits,” Jon McHenry, a GOP polling analyst and vice president at North Star Opinion Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They just don’t think he’s up to the job, whether we’re asking about traits like stamina and sharpness or about policies like the economy and immigration.”
(Daily Caller)—As President Joe Biden continues to poll behind former President Donald Trump for a potential head-to-head matchup in 2024, recent surveys indicate he is also faring much worse than the Republican on issues that are most important to voters.
Trump has been trending ahead of Biden in national and crucial battleground state polls a year out from a hypothetical rematch, and is currently up by 3.2 points in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average. Additionally, Biden is down by double digits against Trump on questions of basic presidential competency, including the handling of voters’ top issues and concerns over the Democrat’s age, according to recent polling data.
“He should be worried, and Democrats more generally should be worried,” Dr. Charles Bullock, elections expert and political science professor at the University of Georgia, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The kinds of issues that Biden is trailing Trump on seem to be the issues that are foremost on most peoples’ minds.”
A Wall Street Journal survey released on Dec. 9 found that only 23% of voters believe Biden’s policies have helped them, compared to nearly 50% who said the same of Trump’s administration.
Ron Faucheux, president of nonpartisan polling firm President of Clarus Research Group, believes this statistic is “the worst omen for Biden,” and told the DCNF “this contrast is deadly” ahead of 2024.
“When Democrats decided to package their economic policies under the single label, ‘Bidenomics,’ it backfired, and gave a name to something voters neither liked nor trusted,” Faucheux said.
Inflation has spiked under the Biden administration, which many critics attribute to the president’s record spending advanced by congressional Democrats. The Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other pieces of Biden’s economic agenda are responsible for green-lighting trillions in spending.
The WSJ poll found that Biden was down by double digits against Trump on who voters trust to handle issues relating to the economy and inflation, as well as immigration, crime and the wars in Ukraine and Israel.
Recent battleground state polling has affirmed the national surveys, finding that Biden is far behind Trump on key issues voters are concerned about going into election year.
A Morning Consult/Bloomberg survey published Thursday shows that across seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina — 51% of voters said the country’s economy was better off under Trump compared to 34% under Biden. The numbers were nearly identical when asked if they’re better off financially now than they were when Trump was president.
Trump also scored double-digits higher than Biden on who the electorate trusts to handle the economy, crime and immigration — which voters said were some of the most pressing issues to them ahead of 2024, according to the Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll.
CNN/SSRS polls in Michigan and Georgia released Monday indicated Trump scored far ahead of Biden for their respective “policy decisions on major issues.”
Another battleground state poll, conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies in Arizona, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania, yielded similar results. In all of the states, Trump was ahead of Biden by double digits on issues concerning who “can get the economy going again” and “who will be tough on China.”
“The voters see the same decline for our country where we look weak. Where the economy’s bad, where our enemies are taking advantage of this weakness, and you’ve got a world where you’ve got really bad wars in Ukraine and now in the Middle East, and Biden can’t stop it,” John McLaughlin, CEO and partner of McLaughlin & Associates, which works closely with the Trump campaign, told the DCNF. “The sooner the election happens, the better off the voters will be, and the better off the country will be.”
Biden is also lagging far behind Trump on who voters believe are better fit to serve another term, given the current and former presidents are 81 and 77 years old, respectively.
Trump led Biden 45% to 29% on the question of who “is mentally up for the job” in the WSJ poll, and was ahead by 34 points on “physical stamina.”
An Economist/YouGov survey released Wednesday found that 55% of voters believe Biden’s health and age would “severely limit his ability to do the job,” while only 26% said the same of Trump.
The battleground state polls yielded similar results on the president’s sharpness, stamina and physical and mental health.
Bullock argued that Trump has been successful in messaging on the age issue, noting his “Sleepy Joe” nickname for Biden, posing a sharp contrast between the two men.
“It has taken hold, and it’s been augmented by some things, like when Biden stumbles or falls or that sort of thing,” Bullock told the DCNF. “Well, that kind of underscores, or reinforces, the message that Trump has been putting out.”
Additionally, polling suggests Trump fares better on some personal attributes that are essential to the presidency.
The Economist/YouGov poll found that only 36% of voters believe Biden is a strong leader, compared to nearly 60% who said the same of Trump. Biden was also down by double digits on questions of who the stronger leader is and who knows how to get things done in nearly all of the swing states Redfield & Wilton Strategies surveyed.
“All of these polls point to voters having already decided against Biden on the current merits,” Jon McHenry, a GOP polling analyst and vice president at North Star Opinion Research, told the DCNF. “They just don’t think he’s up to the job, whether we’re asking about traits like stamina and sharpness or about policies like the economy and immigration.”
The last time an incumbent president had nearly as low of an approval rating going into an election year as Biden does, it was Jimmy Carter in November 1979, according to Gallup. Biden’s most recent job performance score was at 37% in November, which is 3 points lower than Carter’s was just a year before he lost to Republican Ronald Reagan by nearly 10 points.
“As we move closer to the start of 2024, this may be the last opportunity for Biden to question his own political assumptions —and to decide not to run,” said Faucheux. “That would be the lighting strike that changes everything.”
The RCP average for a 2024 national Democratic and Republican primary, based on the most recent polling, indicates Biden and Trump are leading their respective fields with 68% and 60% support, respectively.
Neither Biden nor Trump’s campaigns responded to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
I swear we live in a nation of simpleton mentally–challenged clowns!!!
We sane folk with an IQ above a Pet Rock observed election fraud in 2020, 2022, 2023 and these nimrods yak and yak about polls —- are they demented?!
Brownstone Institute people, not the sharpest tools in the shed, claim to be “conservatives” but live in fear of being classified by that CIA designation: “conspiracy theorists” — — they write articles about CISA’s EI–ISAC and censorship, but neglect to figure out the “EI” stands for ELECTION INFRASTRUCTURE!? (Same applies to the lowbrows at Heritage and Manhattan Institute; must be in a competition for a Special Ed Award?!)
A regular bunch of Sherlocks they aren’t!!!
Word up, Ameritards and 4Fers: Trump signed the CISA Act of 2018 — try reading it some time to figure out what I said, because that dingaling who signed that in 2018 sure cannot!!!
Reading is FUNDAMENTAL — try it some time!
Best description for this article?
Meat puppets talking about meat puppets!
Need to hold out for some 101—year—old candidates for prez???
Demoncrats cheat . Full stop. The only way we can win is to flood the machines with votes . Overwhelm them by having the 100 million evangelicals VOTE this time, or maybe the 100 million patriots a lot of which did not show up to vote either. You may not like his tweets but in every metric the country was better off. I’m not sure if the country will last another year.
Polls today are designed to influence, not reflect, public opinion. Like everything from government, media, academia, and corporate America, lies prevail with an eye toward deception. JoeBama Briben’s support is probably 15-20 points lower than any poll claims.