If Joe Biden wants to hold onto the White House in 2024, Dorien Dudley is the man he has to convince.

At 19, Mr Dudley is voting for the first time next year at his home in Baldwin County, Georgia – one of the most reliable bellwether areas in the country.

Since 1984, voters there have chosen the successful presidential candidate in all but one election. In 2020, they helped Mr Biden over the line to win Georgia by just 0.2 per cent.

As a young black man, Mr Dudley also represents a caucus of ethnic minority and Gen Z voters that helped the 81-year-old president take power three years ago, and which he is now trying to hold onto.

So far, it does not seem to be working.

“With Joe Biden, I’m not really for or against. I really have indifferent thoughts on it,” says Mr Dudley, after revealing he once considered a career in politics, but decided against it after a teacher persuaded him that politicians are all the same. Instead, he is joining the military.

“It may seem radical, but I feel like there should be an age limit on people that run for politics,” he adds, noting that Mr Biden’s age and frequent gaffes “most definitely” will inform the way he votes.

Mr Dudley’s apathy is reflected nationally in the latest polls, which show that – among black voters, young people and in swing states more generally – Mr Biden’s campaign is flagging.

Inside the campaign

The president also has the approval of just 39.5 per cent of voters overall – the worst polling position of any president seeking re-election since 1945.

Mr Biden and those around him now have one year to turn around those challenging numbers and – in the words of his campaign slogan – “finish the job”.

The task falls to a small circle of trusted advisers, ensconced in a high-rise office block in Mr Biden’s home town of Wilmington, Delaware, just 10 minutes from his local church.

The mood in the camp is light, despite the results of opinion surveys. “I don’t think polling has been the most effective barometer of how people vote,” one campaign insider told The Telegraph, pointing to a “strong performance” by Democrats in special elections (the congressional equivalent of by-elections) this year.

Leading the team since April is Julie Chavez Rodriguez, his campaign manager and the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez, a fearsome 1960s agricultural trade unionist who organised a five-year national boycott of grapes.

She is described by colleagues as dedicated and, unlike many top aides in US politics, camera-shy.

Joining her at the top table is Quentin Fulks, who masterminded the successful re-election campaign of Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, and Michael Tyler, a former national press secretary of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Much of the day-to-day media work is handled by Kevin Munoz, who ran the White House’s Covid-19 communications strategy and featured personally in ads for the vaccination programme on US dating apps, while the finance team is directed by Colleen Coffey and Michael Pratt, two other former DNC staffers.

They have had their work cut out. Although Mr Biden has made few campaign-specific appearances, with most of his speeches taking place on government time, the campaign has already spent more money than any other candidate. Federal Election Commission receipts show he has spent $24.8 million (£20.1 million) to Donald Trump’s $23 million.

As the campaign picks up in the coming months, more of Mr Biden’s trusted lieutenants are expected to make their way from his White House team to work on his re-election effort.

On Sept 6, the campaign named Grace Landrieu, the White House’s top economic policy and labour adviser, as Mr Biden’s policy director.

Her appointment reflects Mr Biden’s focus as he heads into a year of campaigning. After three years of a presidency marred by high inflation, which has weakened voters’ savings and squeezed household budgets, his aides are in no doubt that a successful economic message is vital to his success.

Economy voters’ top priority

A poll for The Telegraph by Redfield & Wilton Strategies last month found that, in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina, the economy was voters’ top priority. A majority in all six states also said their financial situation had worsened in the last year.

“Voters do attribute Biden’s policies for playing a role in the rising inflation, for sure,” said Philip Van Scheltinga, who conducted the research. “Even if inflation comes down, voters are still feeling the cost of it having risen in the first place, and that’s difficult to overcome for any candidate.

“Even if you have wage growth outpacing inflation, everyone’s savings will have been hit pretty severely.”

With inflation now down to 3.7 per cent, Mr Biden is attempting to take control of the economic narrative by talking about his unique blend of eye-watering state subsidies, labour market regulations and investment in technical education.

The president has passed legislation that pours $422 billion (£359 billion) into the US green energy and semiconductor manufacturing industries and $1.2 trillion into public infrastructure, and argues that the spending will replace “trickle-down” economics by giving America a stronger manufacturing base and reversing the decline of the so-called Rust Belt heartlands in the north-east of the country.

The scornful nickname “Bidenomics”, given to the project by the conservative Wall Street Journal, now adorns the stage behind the podium when he gives political speeches and comes with a strapline: “Investing in America.”

For his campaign staff, the policy is also a way to win over the support of blue-collar workers in the crucial states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All three supported Biden in 2020, but by a margin of less than three per cent.

In almost every economic speech he delivers, Mr Biden talks about “growing the economy from the middle out and bottom up instead of the top down” because “when the middle class does well, the poor have a ladder up and the wealthy still do very well”.

While Mr Biden’s focus on the economy may be necessary, it is also a risk. Unlike most other elections in US history, the incumbent president’s most likely challenger has a White House record of his own to sell.

At his most recent rallies, Donald Trump has spent a significant portion of his lengthy addresses talking about the economy, falsely claiming to have created millions more jobs during his time in office than Mr Biden.

Mr Trump, by far the Republican frontrunner, is also fond of rehearsing his record on foreign diplomacy – not thought of as his strong suit at the time – which he says would have prevented war in Ukraine and Gaza.

Young people unsure on Biden’s foreign policy 

The latest polls show less than half of Americans now think Washington should send weapons to Ukraine, with the biggest fall among Democrats.

The Middle East also presents an electoral challenge for Mr Biden. Although more Americans support Israel than Palestine, the biggest support for Palestinians is found among core Democrat voters.

While 59 per cent of Arab-Americans supported Mr Biden in 2020, just 17 per cent say they would now vote for him, creating a headache for his campaign in the swing states of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which have large Muslim populations. For the first time since 1997, a majority of Arab-American voters do not identify as Democrats.

The polls show young people too are more likely to have qualms about Mr Biden’s interventionist foreign policy instincts.

“I think the defence budget increases about 50 billion every time they vote on it,” said Spencer Roberts, a 22-year-old theatre student from Baldwin County who carries a “F— Trump” badge on his rucksack.

“I’m all down for helping out people, but we are not the world police. I feel like there are more important things that can help people here and now that we could be focusing on.”

On the age issue, he adds: “I’m not gonna get any social security because there are so many old people. They paid in, so they’re getting it out, but there aren’t enough young people to put that money in.”

Age concerns

Concerns about Mr Biden’s age have heightened following a series of public gaffes, including referring to the “nine wonders of the world”, confusing the All Blacks rugby team with the Black and Tan constables that battled with the IRA and referring to Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, as “Mr President”.

More than three-quarters of Americans think Mr Biden is too old to run a second time. Privately, aides worry he could trip on stage at a campaign event and bring his presidential bid to an end, through public humiliation or injury.

Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a centre-Right think-tank, said Mr Biden is facing a particular challenge appealing to young liberals who see him as an elderly, inactive president who does not have their best interests at heart.

“Younger people want action. They want things done more quickly, whether it’s Black Lives Matter or climate change, whatever it happens to be, and so therefore they probably don’t see Biden doing enough,” she said.

“If inflation remains high, if Biden stumbles, if things get worse nationally on all fronts, they could stay home, and so the Biden campaign should be very worried about that.”

Campaign aides for the president think that while the Middle East crisis is unlikely to be dominating the headlines by next November, the collapse in support from young people poses a significant risk.

“We are very cognisant of the need to invest early and build motivation,” said one insider, pointing to an upcoming programme focused on young voters in Madison, Wisconsin – one of the key swing states.

Campaign staff talk about working in a “low trust environment” that requires targeted advertising, outreach programmes and local organising to motivate demographics that would otherwise stay at home.

Campaign not ‘taking black and brown voters for granted’

In recent weeks the campaign has launched $25 million of TV ads in battleground states, addressing issues where the campaign may stumble. Top of the list are the economy, the war in Ukraine and ethnic minority voters.

An ad that aired on Saturday at a college football game declared that the Biden-Harris campaign was “putting in the work for black America”, highlighting the administration’s policies on funding for black businesses, racial equality and healthcare.

“This is the largest investment in black media in campaign history,” one campaign staffer told The Telegraph.

A separate campaign push is rolling out on radio stations with a large number of black listeners in the coming weeks, while a second outreach pilot is launching in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“The campaign is very cognisant of the need not to take black and brown voters for granted,” said an aide.

“In past campaigns they have parachuted into these communities at the last minute. That is the opposite of what we are doing here.”

Jitters about Mr Biden’s electability among both ethnic minorities and young liberals have already seen him make greater use of what one Gen Z Biden-outrider describes as his “secret weapon”: Kamala Harris.

The vice president surprised some analysts by appearing in Mr Biden’s campaign launch video in April after what some saw as a lukewarm first two years in office. Many had expected her to be replaced for Mr Biden’s re-election campaign.

But, since last year’s mid-term elections, when the Democrats’ strong performance eliminated her constant requirement to be in the Senate to cast tie-breaking votes, Ms Harris has embarked on a “Fight for Our Freedoms” tour of historically black US college campuses, giving firebrand speeches designed to emphasise her youth and passion.

It is hoped that the vice president, who is 22 years younger than Mr Biden and whose parents are African-American and Asian-American, will be more able to convince those communities to stick with the Democrats in 2024 than her boss.

In all its literature, the Biden campaign has tried to adopt a positive message to counter the declinism of Mr Trump and a widespread view that democracy in the US is broken.

“There are some who say America is failing,” says a narrator in one recent ad, as the screen is filled with a slow-motion clip of Mr Trump.

“Not Joe Biden. He believes our best days are ahead because he believes in the American people.”

But, with a year until the election and Mr Biden’s campaign off to a faltering start, a key question remains. Do the American people still believe in him?