Tomorrow is Super Tuesday and the state of the nation is…subprime.

Concerns about the economy, inflation, cost-of-living increases, rising crime, the U.S. southern border crisis, Russia’s war on Ukraine — for which Ukraine is fast running out of soldiers to draft — Israel’s war against Hamas — in which a hostage negotiation deadline was missed today — Red Sea shipping, Taiwan’s independence, and a variety of other domestic and foreign policy issues are making the electorate feel less-than warm towards some of its incumbent politicians at the moment.

Witness President Joe Biden’s current polling woes, which seem to be compounding by the day.

It’s getting ugly.

Wall Street Journal:

National Race: Donald Trump 47; Joe Biden 45

Right Direction/Wrong Direction: 21%/69%

Biden Job Approval: 38%

Generic Ballot: Republican 46, Democrat 42

WSJ polling for a potential 6-way race made things look even more dire for President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects.

Things didn’t look up at FOX.

FOX News:

National Race: Donald Trump 49; Joe Biden 47

Biden Job Approval: 42%

Things looked, if possible, even worse for President Biden in the most recent New York Times/Sienna poll.

New York Times:

National Race: Donald Trump 48; Joe Biden 44

Right Direction/Wrong Direction: 25%/65%

Biden Job Approval: 38%

Breaking down the polling by demographic reveals an even more complex picture of crumbling progressive constituencies.

“Trump leads Biden among Hispanics, registered voters overall: poll,” reported Kyle Morris for Fox News last week. “46% of Hispanics said they would vote for Trump, while 40% said they would support Biden.”

“Between candidates Biden and Trump, 46% of Hispanics who responded to the poll said they would vote for Trump, while 40% said they would support Biden,” noted Morris. “That’s a big difference from Biden’s 2020 general election support from Hispanics. Biden won 59% of the Hispanic vote to Trump’s 38% that year, according to Pew Research.”

“Among all respondents who took part in the survey New York Times/Siena poll, Trump also leads Biden, with 48% saying they would vote for him and 43% insisting they would vote for Biden,” he added.

Running against Trump is an even more depressing prospect given that the polls indicate Republican voters could likely triumph by uniting behind any GOP standard-bearer. That the Republican Party is still insisting — more and more vociferously with each passing primary state — that Donald Trump should be the one to do it is sticking in many a progressive craw.

Nor have legal challenges to Trump’s candidacy borne much fruit thus far.

Efforts to kick Trump off the ballots in Colorado and Maine were dealt a death blow this morning when the Supreme Court invalidated such legal machinations in a crushing 9–0 ruling.

This ruling, coming as it does on the eve of Super Tuesday, may serve to supercharge the Trump candidacy in the weeks to come.

“Courts Pummeled Trump,” noted Natalie Andrews for the Wall Street Journal this week. “GOP presidential front-runner is expected to clinch the nomination this month after his legal woes showcased resilience.”

“Donald Trump has been impeached, indicted and ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties for committing fraud and defamation,” began Andrews. “For many Republican voters in this Raleigh exurb, that doesn’t disqualify him from returning to the White House.”

“Instead, it makes them more likely to back Trump in this week’s Super Tuesday primary because they view the GOP presidential front-runner as unfairly targeted by his political enemies,” Andrews reminded readers of the WSJ. “They say his resilience in the face of obstacles shows why he will fight for them if he wins the presidency in November.”

Trump’s ringing triumph in the Supreme Court today is likely to improve his popularity even more to this end. The 9–0 ruling in particular makes the Colorado effort to remove Trump from the ballot look like an embarrassing legal overreach.

It also lends credibility to Trump’s efforts to paint his other legal troubles as hyper-partisan political warfare bound to be sorted out by higher courts in the end.

“Views of Trump’s overall image have improved in recent months, while views of Biden’s image and job performance have turned more negative, Journal polling finds,” noted Natalie Andrews in the WSJ. “In December 2022, negative views of Trump outweighed positive ones by 24 points. That gap declined to 12 points in the new Journal survey.”

“Panic Time for Democrats,” concluded the Wall Street Journal editorial board on March 3, 2024. “Biden is losing to Trump in every poll as Super Tuesday arrives.”

“Worse is the public mood,” noted the outlet grimly. “A quarter or less of Americans think the country is moving in the right direction, and they think Mr. Biden’s Presidency has done more harm than good. They think Mr. Biden is too. old. to be President, and they view Mr. Trump’s Presidency far more favorably than they do Mr. Biden’s.”

The worst of the “worse public mood” is being conveyed in polls and on social media by extremely disenchanted voters whom the media has recently dubbed “double haters”.

“Will Biden or Trump win ‘double haters’?” wondered Celinda Lake and Christine Matthews for USA Today this week. “Unhappy voters may decide 2024 election.”

“There seem to be roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans in the group of ‘double haters,’ although many are independents who may vote for a third-party candidate,” they mused.

Heading into Super Tuesday tomorrow, former President Donald Trump is likely to be riding high on a wave of celebration after his Supreme Court victory today.

If prevalent polling trends are to be believed, President Biden’s reelection campaign has an uphill battle to climb — and time is running out.

(contributing writer, Brooke Bell)