Is Joe Biden the Favorite Now?

President Joe Biden appears to be improving his chances of winning the 2024 election, according to some polls, but with seven months until voters go to the polls, experts have said it is too close to call the result.

Last month it was confirmed that the Democratic incumbent will face off against former president Donald Trump in November, with the pair both winning enough delegates to secure their respective parties’ presidential nomination and teeing up a rematch of the 2020 election.

Since then, analysis has turned to who will win the election and Biden has performed well in some polls.

He is predicted to win the popular vote in eight of the 12 most recent polls added to the RacetotheWH website, which tracks average polling.

In the most recent of these polls, which was done by Reuters and Ipsos, the Democrat is expected to garner 41 percent of the vote share while Trump is predicted to win 37 percent. Ipsos polled 833 registered voters between April 5 and 9 in this survey.

Online prediction platform Polymarket, where users can bet on world events, has also seen Biden’s chances of victory improve substantially against Trump, though he remains the slight underdog.

Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center survey shows 83 percent of Black voters favor the Democratic Party, a 3 percent decline from 1994 when 86 percent aligned in this way.

However, other polls have said Trump will win. One survey by Emerson College of 1,438 registered voters, for instance, suggested the Republican would take 51 percent of the vote against Biden’s 49 percent. This poll was conducted between April 2 and 3.

Biden is facing challenges, though, as three surveys conducted exclusively for Newsweek by Redfield & Wilton Strategies showed that U.S. voters’ disapproval of the president’s actions in the Israel-Gaza crisis has sharpened intensely since December.

Speaking to Newsweek, experts said the margins were still tight and that it is too early to tell whether Biden will win in November.

Newsweek has contacted representatives for Biden and Trump by email to comment on this story.

Thomas Whalen, an associate professor who teaches U.S. politics at Boston University, said: “I think the Biden campaign shouldn’t be popping any champagne corks just yet. The margins are still incredibly tight, especially in the all-important swing states. They can also turn on a dime. I’d be more curious to see how the recent Arizona abortion decision will play on the electorate. Stay tuned.”

William F. Hall, adjunct professor of political science and business at Webster University in St. Louis, said it was difficult to “predict human behavior,” including voting, because it is “unpredictable.”

He said: “The late, great Mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley, stated in his astute, yet highly insightful observation of the implication for polling, ‘The only poll that truly counts, is the poll the voters take in the voting booths on election day.'”

He added: “My own assessment of the potential efficacy or accuracy of the data, contents and information provided in the polling analyses provided by this report, is tempered by my honest belief that politics, in its purest and most honest form, is much more of an art than a science, and to try and predict human behavior, whether for voter preferences or other predictive purposes, through application and use of mathematical modeling, in my view, is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Human behavior, in a word, is unpredictable and that is what makes the study of politics so much fun!”

The election will take place on 5 November. Until then, polls and commentary will continue to drive speculation about the result of the election.

Heath Brown, an associate professor of public policy at City University of New York, said the race was “very close.”

“The polling over the last several months indicate this is a very close race. I wouldn’t read too much into any one or two polls at this point. The trend seems to be that the campaign will be a very tight one and I suspect the polls will reflect that until November.”