WILMINGTON, N.C. — This North Carolina voter is feeling anxious.
Will Rikard, a 49-year-old father of two, was among several hundred Democrats who stood and cheered for Joe Biden as the first-term president gave an impassioned speech recently about the billions of dollars he has allocated to protect the state’s drinking water.
But afterward, the Wilmington resident admitted he is concerned about Biden’s political position in the upcoming rematch with former Republican President Donald Trump.
“There’s not enough energy,” Rikard said of Biden’s coalition. “I think people are gonna need to wake up and get going.”
Exactly six months before Election Day, Biden and Trump are engaged in the first contest in 112 years with a sitting and former president vying for the White House. It’s a race that is both firmly established and highly changeable as many voters are only just beginning to accept the reality of the 2024 campaign.
Conflicts, trials, the independent candidacy of Robert Kennedy Jr., and deep divisions across America have introduced remarkable uncertainty into a race for the White House in which either man would be the oldest president ever inaugurated on Inauguration Day. At the same time, policy battles over abortion, immigration, and the economy are raging on Capitol Hill and in statehouses.
Voters in denial
Looming over it all is the disbelief of many voters, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Biden and Trump — their respective parties’ presumptive nominees — will ultimately appear on the general election ballot this fall.
“I think we have an electorate that’s going through the stages of grief about this election,” said Sarah Longwell, who conducts regular focus groups with voters across the political spectrum as co-founder of Republican Voters Against Trump. “They’ve gone through denial — ‘Not these two, can’t possibly be these two.’ And I think they’re now feeling depressed. I’m waiting for people to reach acceptance.”
Trump is currently facing the first of potentially four criminal trials and facing felony charges. The Constitution does not prohibit him from assuming the presidency if convicted — or even if he is in prison.
Biden, who will turn 82 years old just weeks after Election Day on Nov. 5, is already the oldest president in U.S. history; Trump is 77.
Privately, Democratic operatives close to the campaign are constantly concerned about Biden’s health and voters’ negative perceptions of it. In recent weeks, aides have started walking alongside Biden as he walks to and from Marine One, the presidential helicopter, on the White House South Lawn in an apparent effort to conceal the president’s stiff gait.
Still, neither party is making serious backup plans. Whether voters want to believe it or not, the general election matchup is nearly decided.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said many voters are recovering from what he called “a knock-down, drag-out fight” that was the 2020 presidential election.
“Many of them have not grasped the fact that it is, in fact, going to be a rematch,” Cooper said in an interview. “When they do, I have no doubt that Joe Biden is going to win the day.”
Reaching 270 electoral votes — the states where the competition is toughest
Even before voters start paying close attention, the political map for the battle to reach the 270 electoral votes required to become president is already forming.
Biden’s campaign is growing more hopeful about North Carolina, a state he lost by only 1 percent in 2020. In general, the Democratic president’s reelection campaign has a few hundred staff in over 133 offices in the seven most critical states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.
Trump’s team has barely started to set up infrastructure in swing states, although he campaigned in Wisconsin and Michigan last week, sending a clear message that he wants to block Biden’s path to reelection by winning over the Democrats’ Midwestern “blue wall.”
Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said Trump is making plans to put new resources into at least two other Democratic-leaning states.
At a private donor retreat in Florida on Saturday, LaCivita discussed the campaign’s plans to broaden its electoral map to include Virginia and Minnesota, based on the Trump team’s growing confidence that both states are within reach.
“We have a real opportunity to expand the map here,” LaCivita told The Associated Press. “The Biden campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads and in their ‘vaunted ground game’. And they have nothing to show for it.”
Biden’s campaign welcomed Trump’s team to spend money in Democratic states. “The Biden campaign is going to relentlessly focus on the pathway to 270 electoral votes, and that’s what our efforts represent,” campaign communications director Michael Tyler said.
Biden has been spending much more aggressively on election infrastructure and advertising heading into the six-month period before Election Day.
In the eight weeks since he essentially secured the Republican nomination, Trump’s campaign has spent almost nothing on television advertising, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. Groups supporting Trump have spent just over $9 million.
During the same time, AdImpact found, Biden and his allies have spent over $29 million across Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Trump’s team has been unusually cautious, in part, to avoid the perceived mistakes of 2020, when his campaign basically ran out of money and had to reduce advertising in the critical final days of the election, but also because it has struggled to regain the support of small donors and because some funds were diverted to the former president’s legal defense.
Trump’s team insists they will soon increase their advertising and on-the-ground infrastructure, although LaCivita declined to provide any details.
Voters unimpressed with their choices
It is evident that Biden and Trump have significant work to do to improve their standing with voters.
While publicly optimistic, Biden allies privately recognize that his approval ratings may be lower than those of Democrat Jimmy Carter at this point in his presidency. Trump’s ratings are not much better.
Many polls have consistently indicated that voters are not happy with their choices for the 2024 election.
According to a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted in March, only about 2 out of 10 Americans express excitement about the prospect of Biden (21%) or Trump (25%) winning the presidency. Similarly, only about one-quarter of voters in the survey say they would be satisfied with either candidate.
In a recent CNN poll from April, 53% of registered voters expressed dissatisfaction with the presidential candidates available for the upcoming election.
Another factor to consider is the independent candidate Kennedy, a member of a well-known political family and a proponent of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Both major campaigns are taking him seriously as a potential spoiler, with Trump’s allies notably increasing their criticism of Kennedy in recent days.
Biden's strategy is to remind voters about what Trump's presidency was like.
At the moment, Biden's team is primarily focused on reminding voters about Trump's divisive leadership. There is a sense that, three years after Trump left office, some voters may have forgotten what it was like to have the former reality television star in the Oval Office — or his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which have put him in legal jeopardy.
Biden's plan involves reminding voters of what life was like with Trump and showing them that the current uncertainties are not caused by the president, but can be managed with his leadership. Biden's pollster Mary Murphy emphasized that voters will trust his leadership and stewardship, knowing that things could be much worse if Donald Trump were in office.
Biden's team is also counting on a strong backlash against new abortion restrictions, largely championed by Trump and the Republicans, to drive voters to the Democrats, as was the case in the 2022 midterm election and 2023 state races.
However, Biden's success also depends on his ability to rebuild his winning coalition from 2020, especially at a time when enthusiasm is waning among crucial voting blocs, including Black, young, and Arab American voters who are unhappy with the president's handling of the war in Gaza.
Trump's plan is to use his legal troubles to his advantage.
Trump has had to adjust his campaign due to his first criminal trial in New York, where he faces allegations of financial fraud related to hush money payments to the porn actor Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump. He denies her claim and has pleaded not guilty.
Currently, Trump is obligated to attend the trial most weekdays, and a verdict is likely still weeks away. After that, he faces the possibility of more trials related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents. The Supreme Court is deliberating whether Trump should be granted immunity, or partial immunity, for actions he took while in office.
Despite his ongoing court schedule, Trump managed to squeeze in campaign stops in Wisconsin and Michigan over the past week, where the abortion debate is intense.
In light of the upheaval over the Supreme Court’s reversal of national abortion rights, Trump appeared to be seeking a way to lessen the political impact, suggesting that the issue will ultimately unite the country as states establish varying laws.
“If you don’t win elections, a lot of bad things will happen beyond the abortion issue, affecting your taxes and everything else,” he told Michigan voters.
Trump’s team believes that his unprecedented trial in New York will take over the news and voters’ attention for the foreseeable future. His campaign has mostly stopped trying to introduce unrelated news during the trial.
Even if Trump were to be found guilty by the New York jury, his advisors argue that the basics of the election will stay the same. Trump has actively worked to weaken public trust in the charges against him. Meanwhile, more traditional issues work in his favor, including stubbornly high inflation and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the Trump team's perspective.
LaCivita said that ongoing issues continue to highlight Biden’s weakness as “the news of the day keeps getting worse.”
Both sides agree that the dynamics of the race could still change significantly based on various factors, such as the economy, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, crime, migration trends, or unforeseen events. Potential candidate debates this fall could also be unpredictable.
Biden’s battleground states director Dan Kanninen said that such uncertainty can work in their favor.
“That situation is an opportunity as well as a challenge for us,” he said, “because we have the resources, the infrastructure, and the operation ready to engage voters throughout all those difficult situations.”
