NOW DO YOU BELIEVE ME?

I'm kidding, of course. I know the answer to the question in the post title: All polls are garbage, you'll say, therefore you still don't believe that Donald Trump is the favorite to win the 2024 election, even though one of the best-run polls in the country, and one of the most accurate, says that Trump's on his way to a resounding victory next year unless something changes:

President Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states one year before the 2024 election, suffering from enormous doubts about his age and deep dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy and a host of other issues, new polls by The New York Times and Siena College have found.

The results show Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins of three to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden is ahead only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll found.

Biden as an incumbent might be the weakest Democratic presidential candidate since Mike Dukakis. Nearly every demographic group Democrats have counted on for decades is less enamored of him than of any other recent Democrat:

Voters under 30 favor Mr. Biden by only a single percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Mr. Trump’s edge in rural regions. And while women still favored Mr. Biden, men preferred Mr. Trump by twice as large a margin, reversing the gender advantage that had fueled so many Democratic gains in recent years.

Black voters — long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden — are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Mr. Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.

Of the survey respondents, 67% say the country is on the wrong track, while only 22% say it's on the right track. That's consistent with other recent polls: Economist/YouGov (70% wrong/21% right), USA Today/Suffolk (71% wrong/17% right), Newsnation (63% wrong/33% right). Oh, but I'm sorry: These are just randomly generated numbers that mean nothing, and the fact that they all suggest a similar level of national discontent is just a coincidence. Right?

And by all means keep telling yourself that voters perceive Trump and Biden as equally old and addled:

An overwhelming 71 percent said [Biden] was “too old” to be an effective president — an opinion shared across every demographic and geographic group in the poll, including a remarkable 54 percent of Mr. Biden’s own supporters.

In contrast, only 19 percent of supporters of Mr. Trump, who is 77, viewed him as too old, and 39 percent of the electorate overall.

Here's what one 2020 Biden voter says:

“The world is falling apart under Biden,” said Spencer Weiss, a 53-year-old electrical substation specialist in Bloomsburg, Pa., who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 but is now backing Mr. Trump, albeit with some reservations. “I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role-model leader for the country. But at least I think Trump has his wits about him.”

If Biden (and Kamala Harris) were to step aside in favor of a consensus candidate who could genuinely hold together all or most of the coalition, that would be better by far than what's likely to happen if Democrats stay on their present course. But primaries would expose all the potential rifts in the party's coalition: suburban moderates vs. leftists, elderly Blacks vs. young whites, supporters of Palestinian self-determination vs. liberal Zionists, and so on. It would get ugly.

Which is why I keep saying that Biden needs to start acting as if he's far behind. He can't keep saying, The economy is great -- why don't you folks understand that? I'll say what I've said before: Biden needs to recognize that most of the country doesn't think it's morning in America. And because this is The New York Times, maybe now he will.