As you already know, the campaign rallies are on hold. The traditional campaign fundraisers, too, are on hold. The volunteers who usually run around to register voters are, like the presidential candidates, stuck in an extended lockdown.

However, a lot can change prior to the November election.

Most of us witnessed how President Trump had started with a cash advantage over Joe Biden, and that the DNC started out far behind the RNC. Some of the points that hurt Trump in 2016, such as Republican disunity, have now been fixed, while the other factors that helped him, such as anger at Hillary Clinton, have vanished. Republicans point out that Biden’s knowledge is too limited about China, while Democrats showed the weeks when the president had confidently predicted his travel restrictions on China would restrict the stateside arrival of the virus. 

Let’s look at a few other factors.

Both contenders are more popular than they were about four years ago. If we go back to the last elections, on April 12, 2016, Hillary Clinton had a 10.4-point lead over Trump, but she lost that November. And on April 12, 2012, Barack Obama had a 4.3 lead over Mitt Romney, and he won. If we go back a little, you’ll find that on April 12, 2008, Obama had a marginal 0.4-point lead over John McCain, and he went on to win by the biggest popular and electoral vote margins in the 21st century.

The average as of today shows that Biden is about 5.9 points ahead of Trump, and the Democrat has led in every head-to-head poll pitting him against the president since the primaries began in 2019. But neither Biden nor the president starts out as unpopular as the party’s nominees were in 2016.