This wildcard could decide Donald Trump and Joe Biden's rematch

As the November re-match between US President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump looms, polls have the election on a knife edge. A recent YouGov poll for The Economist, for instance, had the result as a dead heat at 43 per cent apiece.

Fitting perhaps for a country as divided as the United States, Biden has narrowly edged ahead in recent polls although Trump has a slight polling lead in critical swing states and has maintained a lead in other recent polls as well, even though Biden recently polled ahead of Trump in the key battleground state of Wisconsin.

With the economy and immigration front of peoples' minds, there is a growing sense that Biden's success regarding the former is thanks to a sugar rush stimulus which is now wearing off, while many on the Right are concluding that the US-Mexico border - long porous it has been - is now pretty much wide open.

This plays into Trump's hands even though the Democrats have managed to galvanise the female and college-educated vote to a huge extent, not least over abortion. Although the US is becoming an increasingly diverse society, that is not necessarily benefitting Biden as many non-white voters have abandoned the Democrats thanks to the latter's liberal policies.

That said, data from USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll shows Biden gaining support among key demographics, including the under-35s and black voters, while Biden holds steady among Hispanic voters with Trump seeing a decline in support. Yet a recent CNN poll found over half of respondents said Trump’s presidency was a success compared with 39 per cent for Biden.

Of course there is the wildcard of a third candidate. At the moment, that looks most likely to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr, nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, who could take votes from the other candidates. While previous polling has suggested this could penalise Trump, Biden's leads in swing state Wisconsin would be diminished if RFK Jr runs. alongside others.

The US, like the UK, is now a deeply divided country, but whereas in Britain this has manifested in a quiet and tired resignation, with a weary acceptance that Labour - by leaps and bounds ahead in the polls - is cruising to victory off the back of Tory failures, in the US the atmosphere seems more febrile and the country destined to remain divided whoever wins the election.

Aside from the economy and immigration, as well as social issues like abortion, the world will be watching anxiously, not least Europe and Ukraine amid a sense that Trump is much cooler on helping the latter and subsidising NATO, with a sense as well that Trump is more likely to continue backing Israel if the war with Hamas continues.

The great unknown is Taiwan/China. Biden has pretty much continued Trump-era policies towards China and has publicly committed to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack, something Trump has not taken off the table. Although a streak of isolationism runs through the Republican Party, hostility to China is even greater than within the Democrats.

Unlike in Britain, there is now very much clear blue water between the two main parties, with the Democrats having shifted markedly to the Left on social issues since the days of Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama, and the post-Trump GOP having adopted a far more hard-line position on issues like illegal immigration, with both sides planting their flags very firmly down on different sides of the culture wars.

By contrast, in the UK, the Conservative and Labour divide primarily on helping the poor and maybe housebuilding (in rhetoric at least) with the Tories abandoning any pretence of defending the UK's borders, defending traditional values, or championing entrepreneurship and small businesses. In the US a genuine choice exists albeit one which threatens to rip an already-divided country further apart. As election day draw nearer there is still no obvious front-runner for the Biden-Trump re-match.