5 hurdles that could trip Donald Trump up as he tries to retake the White House

Former President Trump is the slight favorite to win the November election with less than six months to go.

This is due less to national polls – where Trump holds only a very small lead – and more to his position in the swing states.

In the average of polls maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), Trump is ahead of President Biden in each of the seven states considered competitive: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The scale of Trump’s lead varies considerably, from more than 5 points in Nevada to a mere 0.1 points in Wisconsin. But Biden won every swing state except North Carolina in 2020. It is clearly significant that the incumbent is now trailing everywhere.

Biden’s problems are compounded by voter discontent with the economy, fissures within his party over Israel and the Palestinians and lingering concerns about his age.

In The Hill/DDHQ average, Biden has a 40% approval rating, while 56% of Americans disapprove of his job performance.

Trump’s advantage is extraordinary, given how his numerous controversies would have sunk anyone else’s political career.

Trump is the only president to be impeached twice. The second impeachment was for inciting the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol.

He is also the only president charged in a criminal trial; Trump’s hush money trial is coming to an end in New York. Trump was indicted in three other cases, bringing the total number of charges against him to 88.

But Trump’s base is famously resilient. The New York trial had no significant impact on his poll ratings, and he easily defeated his rivals for the GOP nomination earlier this year.

The most serious of these rivals, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, announced Wednesday she will vote for Trump in November.

So things are looking relatively good for Trump. But there are big things that can still go wrong.

Here are five of them.

A criminal conviction

This is the most immediate danger, although the scale of the threat is not entirely clear.

A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll drew attention by finding that 1 in 5 Trump supporters might reconsider their support for him if he were convicted of a crime.

But that number comprised just 4% who said they would withdraw their support. The rest of the potential dissenters, 16 percent, said they would “reconsider” their pro-Trump position.

It’s easy to imagine that the majority of Trump voters will ultimately side with him, given his insistence that the prosecutions he faces are politically motivated, the near certainty that he would appeal a conviction, and the general loyalty of his MAGA battalions.

That said, a conviction would be a blow in itself, handing Democrats an explosive campaign charge – “don’t elect a criminal.” It would also give at least some downtown voters pause.

A part of the Republican Party also remains uncomfortable with Trump. Haley continued to get around 20% of the vote in some recent primaries despite suspending her campaign in March.

On the other hand, a Trump acquittal in New York would put wind in his sails and make it easier for him to tarnish the other cases against him. None of these other three cases will be tried before the elections.

In New York, there should be a verdict soon. Judge Juan Merchan expects closing arguments to begin on Tuesday.

A disaster in the debate

Trump has been pushing for debates against Biden and his wish will be fulfilled.

An agreement on an unusually early date – June 27 in Atlanta – was reached last week. A second debate is scheduled for September 10. The first debate will be televised on CNN and the second on ABC.

Trump has renounced the usual approach to setting expectations. The former president called Biden “the worst debater I’ve ever faced” and said “he can’t put two sentences together.”

This type of boasting from Trump lowers the bar that Biden will have to overcome.

Trump avoided all debates during the Republican primary season, arguing that he was so far ahead in the polls that confrontations would be a waste of time. But that could leave him rusty in June.

The danger is also not just a faux pas in a debate.

Now that Trump has the Republican Party nomination within his grasp, there will be more scrutiny on what he proposes to do in a second term.

In a recent interview with Time magazine, he described an approach that was considered authoritarian by critics.

In the interview, he left the door open to firing any U.S. attorney who refused his orders to prosecute someone; pardon people convicted of crimes related to January 6th; allow states with strict abortion laws to monitor women’s pregnancies; and carrying out mass deportations of unauthorized migrants.

An election about abortion

The terrain on which the elections are held will be critical.

There are many issues where Biden and the Democrats have real vulnerabilities, including immigration and the economy. The divisions in the Democratic base over Israel’s attack on Gaza are a problem in themselves.

But Democrats have a big card to play: abortion.

Social conservatives won a huge legal victory in June 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Wade and his guarantee of the right to abortion. But the issue has been a major political headache for the Republican Party ever since.

The liberal side has won every state vote on abortion over the past two years, including in red states like Kentucky and Kansas. The issue has been widely blamed – including by Trump – for the Republican Party’s dismal performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

One year after the dismantling of Roe v. Wade, an NBC News poll showed that 61 percent of voters disapproved of the decision.

It seems unlikely that the importance of abortion will disappear. New measures are being enacted all the time. Florida’s six-week abortion ban went into effect earlier this month.

Trump has tried to sidestep the issue, saying in April that he did not favor a federal abortion ban.

But the issue clearly presents risks for him, especially for female voters in the suburbs, who have long been considered a vital demographic.

Being swept away by other people or unexpected events

The big unknown in the 2024 race is who Trump will choose as his running mate.

Although the former president greatly overshadows who he nominates, the choice is still important – and it can go wrong.

Just consider South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), who was widely considered a serious candidate until she inexplicably included an account of killing her dog in a new book and suffered through a miserable media tour to promote the book.

Whoever Trump chooses will have to better withstand scrutiny.

There are also some concerns within his team about the effect of divisive candidates on other races in key states. The most cited example is Kari Lake, the highly controversial former news anchor who is likely to be the Republican Party’s Senate nominee in Arizona.

There is, of course, also the possibility of some unexpected crisis disrupting the elections. In 2019, no one expected Trump’s 2020 re-election bid to be dominated by a global pandemic. Eight months ago, no one thought that the Israeli-Palestinian issue would have the potential to be a real factor in this year’s elections.

A collision with Biden’s ‘blue wall’

There is a silver lining for Biden in the polls – even if it is quite faint.

Leaving aside the increasingly unlikely possibility of the president turning North Carolina blue, there are six swing states.

Several polls have shown a significant difference between Trump’s standing in the three Southern or Southwest states – Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – and the three northern states that were once considered a Democratic blue wall – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In The Hill/DDHQ averages, Trump was up between 3 and 6 points in the first group, but less than 2 points in the second group.

Of course, polls will change between now and Election Day — and they may simply be inaccurate.

But if Biden managed to move the “blue wall” states into his column, it would change the entire election in one fell swoop.

If Biden won these three states, Trump won the three southern battlegrounds, and everything else remained unchanged from 2020, the president would be reelected by a tiny, nerve-wracking margin — 270 votes to 268 electoral college votes.