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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America, a presidential election year. And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one, because

we want to and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

I am delighted to be joined today by Cliff Young, or Clifford Young, as he's also known,

who is a president at Ipsos polling, and we're going to be talking about whether Joe Biden is making a comeback in the polls because Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union speech a few

weeks ago and the sort of instant take from it or the two weeks on take from it was that it

had made no difference in the polling. But actually, it seems as though nationally he is gaining

on Trump and even in some swing states, he appears to be reducing

the margin. And I'm reminded that Ronda Santis in January of this year kept saying, as soon as we're

all out the picture, as soon as it's just Trump, you're going to see those polls changing and so on.

And I think perhaps he was being a bit

of a conspiracy theorist there, but it does seem as though as this election gets closer,

Trump's advantage is diminishing somewhat. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I agree. I mean, I agree

with both your points that on the one hand, things are looking more rosy for Biden.

That is because, you know, the election's starting.

But most importantly, it's the effect of the economy.

The economy is improving and people are feeling a bit better.

And what I would say about the state of the union, Biden got that right.

He was on message. I wouldn't say the state of the union itself had an effect, but it gave us a good idea or gauge about where Biden was. And the first thing he talked about in that speech was saving democracy. That will be his primary theme. That would be the primary theme of his campaign.

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