A new set of 2024 polls is being called a “five-alarm fire” for Democrats as leaders of the party are calling on President Joe Biden to step aside.
Polling by The New York Times and Siena College found Biden trailing former President Donald Trump in five of six battleground states, while nearly two thirds said the Democrat does not have the “mental sharpness to be an effective president.” The numbers have Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod suggesting the incumbent drop out.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), author of Unwoke, to discuss the “devastating” poll numbers, Axelrod’s response, and what it means for the 2024 election.
Biden Bottoms Out
There has been polling here and there that has shown Trump closing the gap and/or surpassing Biden in head-to-head matchups, but the latest numbers from The New York Times and Siena College have gotten a lot of people’s attention.
The results show Biden trailing Trump by margins of four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in five of six key swing states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, Biden is up by two percentage points.
But the bleeding doesn’t stop there. According to the Times, “discontent pulsates” throughout the Times/Siena poll. A majority of voters said Biden’s policies have personally hurt them and two-thirds of the electorate sees the country moving in the wrong direction.
Biden’s support in usually strong Democratic voting blocks are down, with voters under 30 favoring the forty-sixth president over Trump by a single percentage point. His lead amongst Hispanic voters is down to single digits, while Trump is seeing 22 percent support from Black voters in battleground states – a level “unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times,” the Times noted. The numbers have grown in similarly unprecedented ways for the GOP among rural voters and men.
While the Biden campaign has tried to focus on the president’s handling of the economy, only two percent of voters said the economy was “excellent.” By a 59 percent to 37 percent margin, voters trust Trump over Biden on the economy. That marks the largest gap of any issue and spans the entire electorate – men and women, those with and without college degrees, and every age range and income level.
Axelrod Calls for Change
Megyn called the poll numbers “devastating” for Biden, and she isn’t the only one. Axelrod, who was a campaign strategist to former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and served as a senior adviser in his administration, suggested it’s time for the Democrats to go in another direction.
In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Sunday, Axelrod admitted it’s “very late to change horses” but Biden’s poll numbers should “send tremors of doubt” through the Democratic Party. It’s “not ‘bed-wetting,’ but legitimate concern,” he said.
“[Biden] is justly proud of his accomplishments… but the stakes of miscalculation here are too dramatic to ignore,” he wrote. “Only [Biden] can make this decision… What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?”
Are You Better Off?
In Cruz’s view, elections usually come down to a single question: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? These poll numbers, he said, are “a manifestation of the reality of the Biden record that the last three years under Joe Biden had been an absolute train wreck.”
This leaves the Democrats without much to run on. “You can’t run on the record,” Cruz explained. “You can’t run on the economy because the economy is a mess… [we have] eight million people crossing the southern border, people are afraid for the safety of their family, and then, on top of all of that, overlay the absolute disaster that is foreign policy.”
So far, the Democrats have chosen to make running against Trump the centerpiece of the election, but it remains to be seen if that will be enough. “Their strategy is simple: attack Trump – ‘Trump is the devil’ is their entire campaign message,” he concluded. “These poll numbers show that people are focused on their lives, their families, their kids, and Biden and the Democrats have screwed up the policies concerning all of those things.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Sen. Cruz by tuning in to episode 663 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.