But ignoring the unhappiness is exactly what the nation’s two major parties seem determined to do: A rematch appears increasingly inevitable.

If you watch cable news or read politics-oriented sites, you might not think the concrete is close to set. We’re in the silly season of the campaign, when voting remains a long way off and political journalists and pundits have time to spin out improbable scenarios and pretend to take them seriously.

But don’t be fooled.

Barring some sudden, dramatic event, the die is pretty much cast.

Party leaders versus the voters

Evidence can be seen in our latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies – Los Angeles Times poll of California voters as well as in several recent nationwide surveys.

On the Republican side, the California poll showed Trump’s support has grown over the summer and now stands at 55%, putting him on track to sweep the state’s 169-member delegation to the Republican National Convention, the largest of any state.

That sweep, if it happens, would be possible because of a recent change in state party rules under which a candidate who gets more than 50% of the vote wins all the delegates. It’s one of several changes in rules that Trump’s operatives have engineered in states over the last few months — the sort of behind-the-scenes maneuvering that can determine a nomination.

Nationwide, the picture is much the same: The latest CNN poll, released Tuesday, showed Trump with support from 52% of Republican voters. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in second place, drew only 18%. No one else broke into double digits.

On the Democratic side, the California numbers show Biden with two-thirds of the vote, way ahead of undecided, which was in second place at 17%. A lot of Democrats have doubts about Biden, but he doesn’t face any credible challengers. Neither of the two most prominent candidates running against him, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson, broke into double figures.

Nationally, a survey this week by Morning Consult found that 76% of Democrats said they would back Biden in their state’s nominating contest. In the CNN poll, two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said Biden’s renomination was very or extremely likely. Two-thirds also said they wished the party would pick someone else.

How we got to this point says a lot about where power lies in the two parties.

On the Republican side, Trump’s grassroots support is overriding the deep misgivings of party leaders.

Among Democrats, the reverse is true: Party leaders and elected officials have significantly more enthusiasm for Biden — or concern about the alternatives — than do average voters.

Republican leaders see Trump as a loser who will drag the party to defeat, much as they feel he did in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

Most of the party’s voters don’t buy that. They see Biden as a sure loser. Beyond that, they also believe Trump is their strongest candidate.

Voters aren’t always right, of course. Last year, Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona brushed aside warnings from the party establishment about right-wing candidates for Senate or governor. The warnings were accurate — those candidates lost.

The gap between the GOP elite and the majority of the party’s voters isn’t just about style or rhetoric. It reflects a deep split over what Republicans should stand for.

Former Vice President Mike Pence publicly acknowledged the split between the GOP’s traditional conservative establishment and its populist majority in a speech Wednesday at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire.

“The fundamental divide between these two factions is unbridgeable,” Pence said, as he called for the party to reject the “siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles.”

The speech, which Pence also summarized in an op-ed article for the Wall Street Journal, cogently described the wide gap within the party — although it also raised the question of just what Pence thought he was doing during the four years he served as Trump’s second.

What it didn’t do was acknowledge that the big debate over the party’s future that Pence is calling for already happened — and his side lost.

It’s not just that Trump has a huge lead in polls of Republican voters. The second-place candidate, DeSantis, also identifies with the populist wing Pence deprecates. So does the candidate who sits in third place in most polls, Vivek Ramaswamy.

Add up support for those three in the polling average maintained by the FiveThirtyEight website: 78% of Republican voters back a populist, compared with 15% who support an establishment conservative like Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley or former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Trump is the champion of that populist wing, they’re not interested in a substitute, and there’s no evidence that any of that is changing even as the former president faces four criminal indictments with the first trial scheduled to begin March 4 — the day before California and more than a dozen other states hold their primaries.

Democrats lack any similar deep ideological split despite their divisions over specific policies.

What they have is a nagging worry about Biden’s age — he’ll turn 82 a couple of weeks after the election — and his vitality.

In our poll of California, by far the biggest Democratic state, 48% of voters said they were “very concerned” about Biden’s age, and 42% said they believed Biden’s age would “hurt his chances to win reelection … a lot.” Republicans were most likely to say his age would hurt Biden’s candidacy a lot, but more than a quarter of the state’s Democratic voters agreed.

In the CNN poll, just 49% of Democrats nationwide said Biden had the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president. That’s down 14 points since a previous CNN poll in March.

Party leaders, however, admire Biden, feel he’s gotten a lot accomplished and insist they’ve seen no decline in his abilities. They’re also keenly aware that if Biden were to suddenly step aside, Vice President Kamala Harris would face intense skepticism from many voters. And any move to replace Harris would crack the party open along lines of race and gender.

Democratic leaders have successfully discouraged any credible challenge to Biden. That’s kept the party unified, but at the price of constant worry about a serious physical or verbal stumble between now and an election that remains 14 months away.

Biden also faces the challenge of motivating younger voters — especially younger Black and Latino voters, as I wrote last month. Their tepid support is a big reason that current polls show a Biden-Trump rematch to be so close.

But a lot of the talk about close polls ignores reality.

“We live in an era of close elections,” political science professor Seth Masket noted this week.

The idea that a fresh, new charismatic candidate could sweep in, break the political stalemate and unite the country — or even win by a big majority — flies in the face of what we know about the dug-in nature of American politics today.

Voters have picked their sides. They may not be excited about Trump-Biden 2, but it’s the sequel they seem likely to get. It’ll probably be close. Buckle up.

Our latest California poll

Trump is on track to sweep California’s delegates in presidential race, poll shows

Trump dominates his rivals so heavily that he’s on track to win all of California’s delegates for next year’s Republican convention — a haul that would give him a major chunk of the votes needed to secure his third presidential nomination, Seema Mehta reported. The finding from a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times highlights a turnabout from earlier this year. In February, Trump faced a serious challenge from DeSantis among California Republicans.

Schiff and Porter increasingly dominate race for Senate, poll shows

California has more registered Republicans than any state in the union, but that doesn’t mean one of them will make it to the runoff for the state’s U.S. Senate seat. Six months ahead of the March 5 primary, two Democrats, Reps. Adam B. Schiff and Katie Porter, appear likely to face off next year to decide who will replace longtime Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times. The prospect of Steve Garvey, the former Dodgers and Padres legend, entering the race as a high-profile Republican hasn’t scrambled that dynamic, Benjamin Oreskes reported.

The latest from the campaign trail

Americans are hopelessly confused about big-city crime. Partisanship is partly to blame

Americans think New York is more dangerous than New Orleans, even though the Crescent City’s homicide rate is 12 times higher this year. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents rank Washington, D.C., as one of the country’s safer big cities, above cities like Miami, where the homicide rate is much lower. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents see Seattle as ominously dangerous, even though Houston has twice the homicide rate so far this year. Americans are worried about crime ahead of the 2024 elections, but few have an accurate sense of the problem, Noah Bierman reported.

The latest from Washington

Biden administration considers forcing migrant families to remain in Texas

The Biden administration is considering forcing some migrant families who enter the country without authorization to remain near the border in Texas while awaiting asylum screening, effectively limiting their ability to travel within the U.S., Hamed Aleaziz reported.

Should Supreme Court disqualify Trump from running? Justices may be asked to rule

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Constitution was amended to disqualify from office those political leaders who had betrayed their oath and “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States. Many historians believed that provision — Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — became a dead letter after Congress adopted amnesty acts for ex-Confederates in 1872 and 1898. The latter act declared the “disability imposed” by Section 3 “is hereby removed.” But some law professors who have delved deeply into the history of that era say that view is wrong, David Savage reported.

In wartime Ukraine, Blinken must make case for U.S. commitment despite sagging support at home

With U.S. public support for the war in Ukraine sagging as the battle to eject Russian forces moves slowly, America’s top diplomat is on a drama-filled mission to reassure doubters and shore up a united front. In an unannounced trip to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Wednesday acknowledged the critical moment facing Ukraine in fighting Russia and in building a postwar future. But he said he had “tremendous confidence” that the stakes were too high for Ukraine to fail, Tracy Wilkinson reported.

The latest from California

Dianne Feinstein’s frailty, fight for family millions cast shadow on final Senate chapter

Supporters might have hoped Feinstein’s last chapter in power after 30 years in the U.S. Senate would have buttressed her legacy as a savvy political power broker, but the long farewell has been far from graceful. She is cloistered away from the public when not being prodded into action for brief votes, and is surrounded by a phalanx of defensive aides whenever members of the media approach. In the resulting vacuum of information about the senator’s capabilities and coherence, little is known except her evident decline. That has been especially true since Feinstein’s frailty became fodder for a family squabble — public for all to see in court filings — over the vast fortune left behind by Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, who died last year, Kevin Rector reported.

Robert Rivas wants to use small-town charm to wield big political power in California. Will it work?

In case it wasn’t obvious on the two-lane highway that carves through golden hills, cow pastures and rows of grapevines, a sign inside the roadside Paicines General Store makes the point clear: “Welcome to the country.” When Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas was a boy in the 1980s, his grandmother would walk him and his brother to the store for ice cream before heading to her night shift at a local cannery. “I remember coming here often, and not much has changed,” Rivas said during a recent stop inside, surrounded by racks of cowboy hats, rodeo posters and a bulletin board pinned with business cards for horseshoers and beekeepers. This is the place that shaped Rivas, who recently became one of the most powerful politicians in California after a nasty year-long struggle that divided Democrats in the state Capitol. He’s the first Assembly speaker in a generation to represent a rural district, Laurel Rosenhall reported.

Clarence Avant’s political power: The ‘Black Godfather’ had the ear of three presidents

As Clarence Avant headed into the hills north of Sunset Boulevard one night in the 1970s, a Beverly Hills police officer pulled him over for speeding. Avant told the officer he was headed to his home in Trousdale Estates. The officer was dubious. The Beverly Hills neighborhood, one of the most exclusive in the country, was almost entirely white. Avant was Black. “Look, I gotta hurry up,” Avant said. “Jimmy Carter is coming to my house.” Now even more skeptical, the police officer said he would follow Avant home and write him a ticket — or maybe a few — once they got there. When the officer arrived and, stunned, saw the cul-de-sac swarming with Secret Service agents, he let Avant off the hook. The story, recounted by two of Avant’s close friends, showed how a man known mostly as a barrier-breaking music executive also moved in some of the country’s most powerful political circles, Laura Nelson wrote.

Newsom wants to shape AI’s future. Can California lead the way?

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed an executive order directing state agencies to examine the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence that can generate text, images and other content. The executive order sets the stage for potential regulation around what’s known as generative AI technology, which has already raised concerns about misinformation, plagiarism, bias and child safety. The governor and California lawmakers thus far have been cautious about regulating technology they might not fully understand and hindering business innovations that fuel the state’s economy, Queenie Wong reported.

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