President Biden has narrowed the gap with Donald Trump in the past few months, but Trump still holds a small lead in the race for the presidency.
That’s perhaps the most succinct way to summarize the race two days before the candidates’ first debate — a debate unlike any other in U.S. history. It will occur more than four months before Election Day and before either candidate has received his party’s formal nomination. All previous general-election presidential debates, dating to the first, in 1960, took place in October or late September.
We’re devoting today’s newsletter to the campaign both because of the debate and because of the release this morning of The Times’s 2024 polling averages. Those averages combine survey results from many pollsters, both for the U.S. as a whole and for seven battleground states. I recommend reading my colleague Nate Cohn’s description of the averages in this article.
As Nate explains, Biden began to rise in the polls around the time of his State of the Union address in March. He then rose further after Trump’s felony conviction last month. The two are now essentially tied in the national polls, around 46 percent, when Robert F. Kennedy is excluded from the question. With Kennedy included, Trump leads Biden, 41 percent to 40 percent, with Kennedy at 8 percent and the remaining electorate undecided.
In both the two-way and three-way race, Trump leads in the states likely to decide the outcome. “While he often leads by only a point or two, he does nonetheless hold the edge in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia — states that would be enough for Mr. Trump to win the Electoral College and therefore the presidency,” Nate writes. “Of course, the election will not be held today and the polls will not be exactly right.”
As we’ve explained in past newsletters, the outcome will depend partly on voters who are skeptical of both Biden and Trump. Many of them — including Black, Latino and younger voters — belong to groups that lean Democratic. But they also tend not to have a college degree and to be more conservative than younger college graduates. Many are unhappy with the country’s direction and don’t follow politics as closely as committed Democrats or Republicans do.
One reason that this week’s debate will be important is that it will focus these voters on the campaign in a way that few events have so far.
A postscript
I know that some Times readers believe the media shouldn’t spend much time covering the horse race of a campaign. I partly agree and partly disagree and want to spend a minute on this issue.
Covering the stakes of the election does indeed deserve more attention than the horse-race polls. That’s why The Times spends so much time on the records and the campaign promises of Biden and Trump.
My colleagues covering Trump have written in detail — and have broken news — about his plans for a second term. My colleagues in Washington have written about Biden’s climate record, his foreign policy and much more. This new project compares Biden’s and Trump’s records on several major issues. In The Morning, we’ve devoted newsletters to democracy, immigration, economic policy, health care, labor unions, global alliances and more.
But the horse race and the polls deserve some attention, too. Polls shape how the two candidates run their campaigns — the issues they emphasize, the ads they run and the debate tactics they choose. To cover a presidential campaign while ignoring the polls would be a bit like covering the economy while ignoring the business cycle. It would miss crucial information that shapes people’s decisions.
That said, we will continue to devote more attention to the campaign’s issues and the stakes than the horse race.
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Connor McDavid: The Oilers’ star center won the Conn Smythe trophy for the playoffs’ M.V.P. — a rarity for a player from the losing team.
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ARTS AND IDEAS
Wood-fire-oven pizzerias, once rare outside Italy, now dot the American landscape — not only in cities, but in small communities from Southern Illinois and coastal New England to rural Wisconsin and Oregon. The result, Brett Anderson writes, is that pizza in the United States is better than it has ever been, with a diverse array of toppings and styles.
Try it for yourself: Here are 22 of the best pizza restaurants across the U.S.