US Edition
The Telegraph is asking five experts to regularly predict who will win one of the tightest US elections in recent history.
National polls show Joe Biden and Donald Trump are separated by the finest margins as they are locked in a bitter campaign.
Following developments from the US, our experts will be using their specialisms to periodically plot their likely winner on a sliding scale.
Each time, they will be explaining their decision.
Donald Trump’s campaign is quietly confident. The electoral college system means the White House will ultimately turn on a few thousand voters in a handful of states, and, right now, Mr Trump has the polling advantage there.
But Mr Trump’s inner circle is showing none of the hubris of his 2020 bid. They are keenly aware they need to win back moderates, they have a serious cash crisis in comparison to Joe Biden, and the president is enjoying a bounce from a very strong State of the Union performance (in part because the bar was so low).
Respected Republican pollsters believe at this point Mr Trump has a narrow edge, but with his looming trials and eight months still to go, it feels too close to call.
Mr Trump’s primary race was the most successful for a non-incumbent Republican in modern history.
With his party firmly behind him, he must now convince more independently minded voters to back him – or at least those in the seven states that will decide the election.
And the polls look very good for Mr Trump. Across seven key battleground states, he leads in all but one – Pennsylvania. In four of them, his lead is more than five points. These four swing states would not be enough for Mr Trump to win – it would, in fact, lead to a draw if Mr Biden won the other three.
However, Mr Trump’s 3.8-point lead in Michigan is, so far, enough just to cross the electoral college line of 270, swinging the needle in his favour.
The polls look good for Mr Trump right now, and he’s positioned better than Mitt Romney was circa March 2012 against Barack Obama (another Democrat seeking re-election). But now we’re out of the thicket of primaries – which Mr Trump cakewalked – I can see the tone of the general election shaping up.
As Mr Biden told a New Yorker journalist, Mr Trump won the MAGA primary but not necessarily the Republicans, many of whose moderate supporters backed Nikki Haley. Mr Biden’s State of the Union was weird and shouty, as per usual, but it proved he’s not dead; maybe he’ll debate better than expected. Moreover, the late nights (comedians, chat shows and so on) are turning on Mr Trump, reminding voters that, hey, the economy is good, the US isn’t at war and Mr Biden isn’t all that bad. Early advantage Donald Trump; Joe Biden has lots of scope to recover.
After sailing through the Republican primaries, it’s no surprise that Mr Trump portrays himself as a temporarily embarrassed incumbent. As with 2016, his challengers floundered in the face of his agenda-setting (and ideologically unorthodox) proclamations. His grip over the Republican Party remains as firm as ever.
But this illusion of incumbency, and the complacency it engenders, will prove a challenge to the GOP candidate. An electoral realignment shifting some ethnic minority voters away from the Democratic Party cuts both ways, with Mr Trump’s embarrassing legal woes repelling college-educated whites.
Democrats are counting on high-profile GOP gaffes to sneak their candidate – just as unpopular as Mr Trump, but lacking a MAGA-faithful rank and file – into a second term. But keep your eyes focused on the president: it’s his election to lose, not Mr Trump’s to win.
Donald Trump is ahead in the national polls and among voters in swing states, whose opinion matters the most. But there are still eight months to go, and the former president has a maze of legal challenges to navigate before the election.
The Super Tuesday results showed us that while Republicans might be willing to support Mr Trump before he takes the stand, they could easily change their mind if he is convicted.
On the other side, Joe Biden is making some progress on rehabilitating his geriatric image but persistent inflation and the war in Gaza are turning core Democrat voters against him for other reasons. The current state of the race is very finely balanced.
Methodology
Our experts are asked to plot their decision on a scale of 100, where 0 is a Joe Biden landslide, 50 is a tie and 100 is a Donald Trump landslide.