Biden and Trump Are Neck and Neck Ahead of First Debate

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are set to officially kick off their 2020 rematch with a debate Thursday night. The face-off will offer both men the rare opportunity to move the needle in a race that has been neck-and-neck for months. Trump currently leads Biden by 0.9 points in the RCP Average.

Recent events have failed to budge close polling numbers by more than a few percentage points. Public opinion toward Biden was largely unaffected by Hunter Biden’s convictions on gun charges, and Trump’s felony convictions for the falsification of business records led to statistically insignificant changes in the polls. Last week’s Fox News poll showed that 94% of people did not reconsider who they would vote for after Trump’s conviction.

The American public seems similarly unfazed by any of Biden’s recent headline-grabbing policy moves, including a quest to relieve significant amounts of student debt, two slightly opposing executive actions on immigration, and a tireless slog toward a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The electoral calendar offers few opportunities for Biden and Trump to change the minds of a deeply polarized American public. One major wildcard in the race is Trump’s pick for vice president, which the former president has said he will announce at the Republican National Convention in mid-July. While there are certainly favorites for the position, it seem unlikely that Trump’s running mate will sway many voters either way.

A head-to-head debate, on the other hand, offers the American public an opportunity to see how Biden and Trump measure up against one another since their last meeting four years ago. Thursday’s debate is supposed to be the first of two, with the second planned for Sept. 10. The June session is the earliest general-election debate in modern history, meaning its effects are likely to linger as both sides of the aisle officially nominate their respective candidates in July and August. 

"If you're looking at the calendar for the next five months, this is one of those moments. And somebody's going to take advantage of it," said Chip Saltsman, a GOP strategist. 

The debate will give both candidates a chance to challenge widely held perceptions about them. Biden must defy the opinion that he is too old to serve another term – he would be 86 years old if he left office in Jan. 2029. A YouGov poll showed that over half (54%) of Americans said that Biden’s health and age would “severely limit his ability to do the job” after special counsel Robert Hur reported that the president was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Trump, for his part, would do well to rewrite the narrative that he is an unhinged criminal with dictatorial designs and no real policy plan. His repeated interruptions and tangents during the first 2020 debate left some viewers with a sour taste in their mouths and led Trump to tone himself down during the next debate and focus more on Republican policy initiatives.

"I think this will be the most consequential presidential debate ever," said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist.

"We've also never been a situation where there's so many questions about both candidates' core abilities. Is Biden too old? Is Trump too unstable?" Conant said in an ABC News interview. "These are existential questions that a lot of the people tuning in are going to be asking. And then, obviously, we've never had a debate this early in the calendar, so it is likely to set the tone for the rest of the campaign."