Joe Biden and Donald Trump's Staggering Reversal of Fortunes

Four years ago, Joe Biden was about to embark on his third attempt at becoming the U.S. president, having been part of the political scene for decades. At the time, he faced an incumbent president in Donald Trump, who had jumped many of the rungs of power, going from businessman and reality TV star to the 45th commander in chief.

As America approaches the 2024 presidential election, those two same frontrunners appear likely to face each other again. This time, the tables seem to have turned on each of their fortunes—although not in the way some might have anticipated.

With Biden's announcement that he will seek a second term in the White House expected to be made on Tuesday, the Democrat incumbent will likely breeze through a thin Democratic field and looks best placed to take on the Republican candidate. This may be in part due to Biden's legislative agenda, which has seen the passing of landmark bills such as the Inflation Reduction Act.

His adversary will be running a very different campaign—while fighting criminal charges against him by the Manhattan district attorney. Trump denies the charges, and he and his allies have described them as politically motivated.

"The Democrats would much rather run against Trump, for whom the negatives are very high, including among independents," Christopher Phelps, a professor of American political history and elections at the University of Nottingham, in the U.K., told Newsweek.

Biden's aides are planning to release a launch video on April 25—marking exactly four years since he fired the starting pistol on his previous run, the Associated Press reported. He made a short-lived attempt in the 1988 election, and again in 2008, this time with another two decades of high-profile experience under his belt, eventually becoming Barack Obama's vice president.

Now getting his own turn at sitting behind the Resolute Desk, Democrats argue the 80-year-old—who is already the oldest president in U.S. history and will turn 82 shortly after election night—will use what they see as his legislative achievements as the basis for his pitch to the electorate, rather than hitting the campaign trail hard.

"Biden is delivering and making the strong case for re-election before, during and after any formal campaign announcement," Scott Mulhauser, a Democratic consultant and former Biden spokesman, told AP.

He added that his "wins on economic and political fronts" were "what success looks like" and were "how incumbents win."

"Biden is very old, and he now looks old," Phelps said. "On the other hand, he's unobjectionable to a lot of people in a lot of ways; he's unthreatening in many ways, and that's not true of Trump." Mulhauser noted that Trump, at 76, "is no spring chicken."

Biden advocates argue that the president inherited a global pandemic that had made a deep impact on the nation's economy, and has gone on to return America to growth and create over 12 million jobs, while orchestrating the global response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A U.S.A. Today/Suffolk poll of 1,200 voters, conducted between April 15-18, found 85 percent of those who voted for Biden in 2020 thought he had done a good job while in office. However, 43 percent of his voters were less excited about supporting him next time, compared with 24 percent who were more excited.

Others noted that Trump's re-election campaign was also set against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, and that among recent U.S. presidents, he is the only one under which Russia did not invade another country. The same poll found 93 percent of his voters felt he had done a good job. In contrast to Biden, 45 percent said they were more excited about voting for him in 2024 than last time, compared with 33 percent who were less excited.

Despite Biden's supporters highlighting the Inflation Reduction Act among his achievements, voters seem to be unconvinced about his handling of the economy more generally.

"It's a time of very high inflation-high employment, but if inflation is eating away at one's sense of prosperity, it cuts against the value of the unemployment [rate] politically," Phelps said. "It's a bit easy to be overly simplistic about this, but as a baseline assumption it works, that Americans tend to vote in presidential politics on their perceived economic interests, and what matters the most is the perceived direction of the economy—not necessarily the state of the economy."

Some 61 percent of U.S. voters have low levels of confidence in Biden to make good decisions about economic policy, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center on April 7. This was unchanged since 2022. It also found that 65 percent had low levels of confidence both in his policies toward immigration and dealing with China, figures which have worsened for Biden in the past year.

Phelps said that much of the outcome of the election would depend on how the U.S. weathers a potential recession in the next year. But it will also hinge on other variables, Phelps argued, such as culture wars issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, which have already resulted in a slide towards Democrat candidates in swing states.

One would typically think that being the first president in U.S. history to face a criminal indictment would be a death sentence for a candidate's hopes of a political return. But the felony charges leveled against Trump in late March appear to have bolstered his support, with two-thirds of his 2020 voters indifferent about the indictment and a further 27 percent saying they were more likely to vote for him.

Trump is also facing a separate investigation in Georgia over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state, as well as an FBI investigation into classified documents found after he had left office at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, residence.

It also wouldn't be the first presidential campaign he has fought while being dogged by controversy. In 2016, he praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, faced accusations of sexual misconduct, which he denied, and perhaps most famously was caught on tape saying he could grab women "by the p****," for which he apologized.

Recent polls have largely placed Biden ahead of Trump in a likely 2024 run-off, but only by a few points. A YouGov poll, conducted between April 14-17 of 1,027 registered voters, put the sitting president four points clear of Trump. However, several more recent voter surveys by YouGov and Harris have Trump ahead by 1 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

Phelps said that though the U.S. was "many miles away from election day in political terms," these snapshots were "interesting" as they suggest "the president of the United States against any Republican comer is the underdog."

He added that the Democrats were not in "superb shape," but said: "That can work in the favor of the Democrats, because when Democratic voters are nervous about the outcome—when they sense it is not safe for the incumbent—that's when they're more likely to both to get themselves out of the house and get to the polls. So the worry factor can actually be energizing."

Biden's anticipated early announcement may serve to ward off any Democratic rivals. So far, only self-help author Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spoken out against vaccines and launched his campaign on Wednesday, have declared.

By contrast, Trump is likely to face a Republican field with at least one other serious contender. Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Asa Hutchinson, the previous governor of Arkansas, have declared, and the Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is widely expected to throw his hat in the ring.

If DeSantis did, though recent polls suggest he would have a hard time beating Trump in the primaries, when pitted against Biden, surveys suggest he could draw a similar lead to Trump.

Phelps said the Florida governor "has, in a way, all of Trump's political instincts" when it came to culture wars rhetoric, but also "doesn't come with all the personal baggage and would seem younger." However, he argued that the outcome of the 2022 Midterms, which handed the GOP the slim control of the House, suggested for "a lot of moderate voters, they want the extremism to stop."

Update 04/24/23, 11 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional background information.