And yet, Biden, saddled with an approval rating of just 33% in the survey, is still in the game against Trump. The survey showed no clear leader, with Biden earning 44% to Trump’s 41% among registered voters, within the poll’s margin of sampling error. A poll is just a snapshot in time, but it’s hardly encouraging news for the ex-President and suggests he has huge liabilities in the general electorate, despite expectations among his conservative media boosters that he would cruise to revenge over an elderly Biden in 2024.

But the closeness also points to a more profound theme that is emerging as the US barrels toward 2024 and has implications beyond the identity of the person who sits in the Oval Office in 2025. A country mired in multiple crises, politically estranged within and facing risky international flashpoints may get a 2024 contest between two candidates whose answers haven’t worked over the previous eight years and whom millions of people would like to see retire from the stage to make room for younger, fresher faces.

Such a scenario would be an indictment of a party system that is already fused into dysfunction by hyper partisanship and Trump’s attack on the 2020 election. It would likely leave the victor in 2024 without a workable mandate at a time when Washington is failing to respond to the country’s longer-term needs. And it would further strain faith among voters about the political system.