The Cook Political Report (CPR) has shifted Michigan and Nevada toward the GOP amid President Biden’s weak polling numbers just under a year before the 2024 election.
A new report from the nonpartisan election handicapper notes Biden’s approval rating is at just 39 percent according to the latest FiveThirtyEight polling averages, arguing those “unimpressive” figures make it “hard to justify keeping two battleground states — Nevada and Michigan — in the Lean Democrat column.”
Biden won a majority in both states back in 2020, but the president “isn’t performing any better either in job approval or in head-to-head matchups with Trump in those states than in the other battleground contests,” writes CPR’s Editor-in-Chief Amy Walter.
Nevada and Michigan now shift to join Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as “toss up” states for next year’s presidential race.
As Biden campaigns for another four years in the White House — heading toward a possible 2024 rematch with former President Trump, the Republican front-runner — he’s been plagued by poor poll numbers.
In Nevada, Biden’s “weak standing with Latino and younger voters has outsized repercussions,” Walter said.
In Michigan, Biden may have an uphill battle with the state’s younger voters and its significant Arab American population as he faces division over the war in the Middle East, the CPR report notes.
Biden’s team has largely shrugged off the lackluster stats a year out from Election Day, but others in the president’s party have sounded alarms about what the figures might signal for next year.
A recent Wall Street Journal poll found 61 percent disapproving of Biden’s job performance. In a Monmouth University poll released Monday, that number was 64 percent.
Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg said Monday on CNN that Biden’s campaign is “losing ground every month,” and The Washington Post reported this week that Biden is said to be “increasingly frustrated” by the numbers.