The result is another largely unconventional presidential election this year, with Trump holding a slight lead in the polls and looking far more likely to win the White House than he did in 2020.
The New York jury's decision in Trump's hush-money trial will give Biden another opportunity to get his message out, along with a June debate and a summer political convention, but barring some unexpected stumbles or upsets, neither side expects anything to reset the race by the fall.
The two world-famous candidates, who most Americans had hoped would not appear on the ballot, are battling not only each other but also for the attention of dispirited voters. While Trump's advisers see room for him to further improve his vote share, Biden is betting that his massive operation has already exerted immense influence and that he can win a narrow victory in the final months.
“The demographic that will decide this election is not paying attention to this election right now, and they're not paying attention to the news in general,” said Molly Murphy, a pollster for the Biden campaign. “There's not a day on the calendar when all of those voters are watching the news. It's going to pay off over time, but it's going to take discipline and persistence.”
The message is little comfort to Democrats who see the upcoming election as an existential test of the American political system. Americans continue to view Trump's presidency more favorably than Biden's, with just 28% calling Biden's presidency “good” or “excellent” in an April Pew Research Center poll, compared with 44% who said the same about Trump. Veteran Democrats in presidential elections worry that Trump's populist style could once again spur a higher-than-expected turnout.
“Trump has run for president twice and outperformed the polls both times,” said Howard Wolfson, a Democratic strategist who advised Hillary Clinton's 2008 and Mike Bloomberg's 2020 presidential campaigns.
Polls currently show that Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – key battleground states that Biden won in 2020 – have since lost ground, with parts of his base, including young people, Black and Latino voters, showing a surprising lack of support for his reelection. There is little numerical evidence to support the claim, which Biden repeated at fundraisers in Chicago, Seattle and Palo Alto, California, in May, that “the momentum is clearly in our favor.”
An average of quality polls compiled by The Washington Post shows Biden roughly tied in Wisconsin, slightly behind in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and trailing by more than 4 percentage points in Southern and Western states. Nationally, Biden and Trump are roughly tied on average, although Biden had an 8-point lead over Trump at this time in 2020.
Those numbers have boosted Trump advisers who don't have the funds to immediately respond to Biden's advertising offensive. MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, has spent about $13 million in parts of Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania since March, according to AdImpact.
Biden and his allies are about During that same period, it spent $53 million on advertising in eight states, including the Omaha market. The election is decided by one electoral vote, and former President Barack Obama sometimes trailed his Republican opponents before being re-elected in 2012, he points out.
“We've never been ahead in a general election poll, not even in 2016. We were ahead by 4 points in the last general election polls,” said Jim McLaughlin, a pollster who has worked with the past three Trump campaigns. “Despite these attacks that have been going on for months, Democrats have spent tens of millions of dollars in these battleground states, and yet they're losing ground.”
The Biden campaign argues that polls this far out are not indicative of November results or the effectiveness of spending. Biden aides maintain that Biden's current efforts are not aimed at quickly moving the polls, but at opening lines of communication with voters who are undecided or can be persuaded but are more disillusioned than in previous election cycles. As Trump scales back his party's field operations, Biden has already opened more than 150 offices and hired more than 500 people, and plans to hire more than 2,000 by Election Day, campaign officials said.
“There are a lot of disengaged voters out there who need to have more time to respect their opinions,” said Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign's battleground states director.
“If I were a Republican, I would panic when I see Donald Trump relying solely on name recognition and earned media to appeal to people,” he added, using a campaign term for news coverage.
Biden's target voters are generally unhappy with the direction of the country and have a negative view of his presidency, a fact Trump advisers believe gives Biden room to grow. But those same voters also lean more Democratic in lower-tier elections, have voted Democratic in the past and are disgusted by Trump, Biden advisers say.
“It's tempting to say, 'Nothing is moving means nothing is working,'” Murphy said of the polls. “That's wrong. Nothing is moving does not mean nothing is working.”
The challenge of mobilizing voters Part of the problem is the overwhelming name recognition of the two leading presidential candidates who are already in office: In a race where the candidates are not yet well defined in voters' minds, local canvassing and political advertising tend to have the most impact.
That familiarity helps explain why the ongoing trial in New York — in which Trump is accused of misappropriating hush money to adult film actresses after alleged affairs to help him win the 2016 presidential election — has barely swayed public opinion. A recent Quinnipiac University/NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that about two-thirds of voters said a guilty verdict in the trial would not affect their likelihood of voting for Trump. About one in five voters said it would make them less likely to vote for him.
“The ads and the Biden team's claim that they have all the resources on the ground aren't going to change that,” said John Del Cecato, a Democratic strategist who produced ads for both President Barack Obama's and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's 2020 campaigns. “This isn't a governor's race. This is a presidential race.”
He said he and Biden's advisers have discussed the possibility of making bold political moves in the final months of the campaign, such as announcing a temporary nationwide freeze on rent increases through executive action through the Federal Housing Finance Agency, citing the national cost-of-living crisis, which he argues would put Trump, who made his fortune in real estate, on the side of landlords and limit voters' choices.
So far, there are few signs the Biden campaign feels the need to make any changes to its campaign. Top advisers in key battleground states such as Arizona believe the state’s past rejection of Trump’s politics, and most recently in 2022, still influences voters. “We know what it takes to win here,” said Jen Cox, a senior campaign adviser in the state.
They have a plan in place and are committed to sticking to it, even if the results won't be clear for months.
“With door-to-door canvassing and that kind of stuff, people aren't really going to pick up until late summer, early fall,” Biden told donors at a reception in Seattle on May 10. “But we're very optimistic.”
Clara Ens-Morss and Scott Clement contributed to this report.