Monday’s Morning Jolt: “There are about seven months until Election Day, but right now, Donald Trump’s road to victory in the 2024 presidential race looks surprisingly smooth.. [If you’re Biden,] you would prefer to consistently lead in swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. That is not the case. You can find a good poll for Biden here and there, but the majority point to Trump leads — usually narrow, but sometimes not-so-narrow.”

This brought out the usual expressions of skepticism.

The Wall Street Journal, late last night:

The poll of the election’s main battlegrounds shows Trump holding leads of between 2 and 8 percentage points in six states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina—on a test ballot that includes third-party and independent candidates. Trump holds similar leads when voters are asked to choose only between him and Biden.

The one outlier is Wisconsin, where Biden leads by 3 points on the multiple-candidate ballot, and where the two candidates are tied in a head-to-head matchup.

Again, the numbers in these states could change, and Biden’s support could increase. But a lot of Democrats are whistling past the graveyard and just assuming that by autumn, Biden will be neck-and-neck in all the swing states that matter most. It is unclear what will prompt a significant change in the numbers in a contest between two exceptionally well-known and largely disliked candidates.

And once again, for a swing state, North Carolina does not seem all that swing-y.