Biden “catches” Trump in the latest “New York Times” poll, but Americans see serious mistakes in both

The President of the United States, Joe Biden, is close to catching the more than certain Republican candidate for the White House, Donald Trump, after a period in which some polls showed him consistently below his main opponent.

In a new survey by the “New York Times” and Siena College, the Democrat appears with 45% of voting intentions, against 46% for the Republican. By the end of February, Trump had a more robust lead, from 48% to 43%numbers from before the primaries, when he had not yet become the almost certain Republican candidate.

The “New York Times” writes that Biden’s path, although short, takes place in a climate in which the Democratic base is beginning to realize that it has to unite around the President, regardless of the doubts they may have regarding his age, his to the economy, to support for Ukraine or Israel. “Biden’s rise appears to largely result from his improved standing among traditional Democratic voters, as there is now a higher percentage of voters who supported him in 2020 and who say they will vote for him again than there was a year ago. month. Biden is now able to secure 89% of his 2020 supporters.” Trump manages to retain 94% of his former voters, a very high figure.

This survey confirms a trend that has been emerging for a long time: these elections are going to be very competitive, just like the last two presidential elections, which, in some of the ‘swing’ states, which can vote for both Democrats and Republicans, were decided by a few thousand votes.

The percentage of voters who consider that the country is not heading in a good direction is 64% and almost 80% of voters still classify the country’s economic conditions as “reasonable or bad”, including the majority of Democrats. The biggest problems that respondents identify in each of the candidates also offer no surprises: Biden is considered too old, Trump is under suspicion of having committed crimes.

Trump is due to face the courts this month, a moment never seen before in the history of the United States, as no former President has ever faced criminal proceedings. The former President will be tried in Manhattan for his alleged role in a scheme of payments, made before the 2016 elections, to silence a former pornographic actress who claims to have been sexually involved with Trump. Trump still faces three other criminal trials in federal courts and in Georgia for the crimes of election interference, conspiracy and mishandling of confidential documents after leaving the White House.

These four criminal cases join others in which Trump will have to answer for defamation and sexual misconduct and for business fraud.

Biden, on the other hand, faces a sharp rise in inflation, after it fell a little at the beginning of the year.

A new survey of the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reveals that more than half of American adults believe that Biden’s presidency has harmed the country in terms of cost of living and immigration, while almost half believe that Trump’s presidency has harmed the country in terms of voting rights and election security, relations with foreign countries, abortion laws and climate change.