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By Andrew Stanton
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President Joe Biden has said he would withdraw from the presidential race only if polling shows there is "no way" he can beat Donald Trump, but some political experts say recent surveys suggest he could still win.
Biden is facing growing calls from Democrats to step down from the race amid concerns about his ability to win following his debate performance against Trump last month. Sounding hoarse, Biden, 81, stumbled through several answers and appeared to lose his train of thought, doing little to quell concerns about his age and mental acuity. As of Friday, more than 30 Democratic lawmakers have said he should pass the torch to a younger candidate.
However, the president has resisted calls to step aside, arguing that he remains the candidate best suited to beat Trump, despite polls that show him trailing the former president in key battleground states. Biden's team continues to say he is staying in the race.
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During a press conference earlier in July, Biden was asked if he would step aside if polling showed Vice President Kamala Harris performing better than he would against Trump.
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"No, unless they came back and said, 'There's no way you can win,'" he said. "No one's saying that. No poll's saying that."
Robert Y. Shapiro, a professor of political science at Columbia University, told Newsweek on Friday the current polls don't show that there's "no way" Biden can win, even if Trump's lead is "real and increasing."
"I think if the results started to show Trump not only leading but getting more than 50 percent support, that would be most persuasive. He has not [been] getting that level of support yet nationally and in key states," Shapiro said.
While Trump leads Biden in key swing states, he is still polling in the low to mid-40s. Even in Trump's strongest battleground state, North Carolina, where he leads by more than 6 points, he is averaging only 45.4 percent support in recent surveys, according to FiveThirtyEight's polling aggregate.
Newsweek reached out by email to Biden's campaign for comment.
Shapiro said there is a "big enthusiasm gap" between Republicans and Democrats, and Biden may struggle to overcome it. But a new candidate could "provide a jolt to the Democratic base and campaign contributors and could appeal to voters who have been looking for a new candidate," he said.
Grant Davis Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, told Newsweek that Biden's use of "no way" is "deliberately vague," saying that many pundits saw Trump as having close to no chance of winning in 2016.
"What I imagine 'no way' means in practice is that they would need to demonstrate very definitive—and stable—findings from the battleground states, buttressed by focus group data, showing that Biden is far behind and does not have an identifiable path forward to overcome the disadvantage," Reeher said.
He continued, "I have not seen anything that would fit this description so far. The race is still tight, and November is a long way off." Concerns about Biden's age, however, seem to be "more permanent," he said.
Polls may not be the best measure for Biden to use, Reeher said. Instead, he should consider whether serving another four-year term is a "realistic proposition" and consider giving Democrats an opportunity to debate whether they want Harris as their nominee.
"The polls are not the right metric," he said. "Under that system, any candidate who was heavily down in the polls would drop out. That would include Goldwater in 1964, McGovern in 1972, Carter in 1980, Mondale in 1984 and Dole in 1996. No party has ever run its campaigns this way."
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