Why are Joe Biden’s poll numbers improving?

After several weeks of almost daily embarrassing senior moments on the campaign trail, Joe Biden is somehow improving in the polls. The FiveThirtyEight website’s average now puts him 0.1 per cent ahead of Donald Trump in national surveys — the first time this year he’s lead his rival. 

The current president is still behind the former president in nearly all the swing-state polls, his ‘job approval’ numbers continue to worsen, and bookmakers still have Trump as strong favourite to win again in November. But Trump is not pulling away towards victory. On the contrary, if Biden defies very low expectations and performs well in the first debate on Thursday next week, the Democratic media machine will start talking about Joe’s ‘hot streak’, ‘Trump’s slump’ or even ‘Biden’s comeback’. 

Intelligent commentators have long said that the 2024 presidential election will be extremely close. What’s interesting, however, is that the mass circulation in recent days of video clips of a demented Joe Biden struggling through yet another public appearance — whether that’s D Day, Juneteenth, alongside Barack Obama or just ambling to and from Marine One — seems not to damage his chances of re-election.