Will Joe Biden drag down the rest of the Democrats?

At this point, President Joe Biden’s dismal polling numbers aren’t anything new.

A new Emerson College poll released Friday spelled even more bad news for the commander-in-chief, with former president Donald Trump taking a narrow, two-point lead. That comes after a New York Times/Siena College poll showed Biden losing to Trump in five of the six swing states, leading only in Wisconsin. Other polls show that even as Biden wins so-called “double-haters” — voters who do not want either candidate — he still trails Trump.

The Biden campaign has continually downplayed his poor polling performance, emphasizing that the election is a little less than six months away and voters have yet to make up their minds. But that doesn’t change the fact that Biden has consistently trailed Trump in many of the leading polls.

His weak numbers don’t just pose a threat to him: They could also drag down other Democrats.

At the moment, Democrats have held onto a razor-thin majority in the Senate, with just 51 seats. Republicans are all but guaranteed to flip retiring Senator Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia, where Trump won every county. That means Democrats need to win in two other states Trump won twice—Ohio and Montana—and keep seats in states Biden narrowly won in 2020, namely Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona.

That’s a tough order given that unlike during the midterms, which see lower voter turnout, Democratic candidates will have to contend with Trump’s voters during the 2024 elections.

But as of now, most Democrats are actually outpacing their Republican opponents in Senate races despite Biden’s poor numbers. The clearest example of this is Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. He and Biden are both natives of