Joe Biden is a campaign hostage, trapped in a basement bunker, where he pleads for the dollars and votes he needs to return him to the White House. The man he hopes to replace, President Donald Trump, is a free man, with the national stage that comes with the job and the liberty to say whatever he wants, whenever he wants, with the knowledge it will be broadcast around the world.

The pandemic-induced situation would appear to benefit Trump, whose presidential megaphone is even more powerful in the absence of a traveling, speech-making presumptive Democratic presidential opponent. However, the beneficiary appears to be former Vice President Biden, who is climbing in the polls despite having less money and little freedom.

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A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Monday had Biden ahead of Trump nationally by double digits, startling in a country with deep and firm partisan divisions. The survey had Biden with 50% of the vote, compared to 40% for Trump, without a third-party candidate choice. In Suffolks' last head-to-head poll in December – right before the president was impeached – Trump led Biden by 3 percentage points.

Polling in battleground states shows a tighter race, but still generally with Biden in the lead. The former vice president – despite not having delivered a speech to a crowd since March 10 – is ahead in Pennsylvania , Michigan and Arizona , and a hair's breadth lead in Wisconsin and Florida .

Trump, increasingly frustrated at his home-bound status, uses his briefings to lambaste the media and makes such mistakes as suggesting household cleaners and light could kill the virus inside people's bodies. And that has put the gaffe-prone Biden in an involuntary but beneficial position, where all he has needed to do is sit, breathe and look avuncular to maintain his advantage in the polls.

"The president's making a pretty good case for Biden almost every time he's in public," says Harrison Hickman, a veteran Democratic consultant. "It's one of the hardest things in politics, to just stand aside and let someone self-destruct. But the circumstances are making that more of a necessity than a strategy."

Polling shows that the public gives Trump middling marks for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak. While he received a bump in the polls in March, the improvement was low compared to the 20-30 point bump presidents often get when the country is rallying behind its leader at a time of crisis. Governors in both parties have won higher approval ratings from voters on leadership during the pandemic.

The 2020 campaign is like no other in modern history, with the technology for both men to communicate with the public without having to show up, but with both also suffering, in different ways, for their inability to connect directly with voters. Trump feeds off a cheering and chanting crowd, while Biden shines when he is showing empathy to an individual at a town hall. Four years ago to the day, Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton were both celebrating their "Acela Primary" victories and traveling around the country. Trump gave a major foreign policy speech at a Washington hotel on April 27, 2016.

Biden has held virtual events to reach voters and raise money. A "Fabulous Evening with Vice President Joe Biden" last Thursday night featured such luminaries as singer Mellisa Etheridge, sports legend Billie Jean King and actors Kristen Chenoweth and Billy Porter. But it was all online, making the brush-with-celebrity appeal for donors almost meaningless (though he still managed to raise $1.1 million that night).

Trump has the bully pulpit, but has not been using it to his advantage, political analysts say. The president has always been more comfortable at a large campaign rally than in the stodgier trappings of the White House, and being forced to interact with a White House media he frequently notes he considers illegitimate is not helping make his case with voters, analysts say.

Still, Biden can't simply wait by the sidelines and hope Trump continues to trip up in his handling of the matter. In Wisconsin, a state Trump won in 2016 and which is regarded as the toughest for Biden to reclaim for Democrats in the fall, voters are not going to give Biden a chance if he continues to stay out of the spotlight, says Brian Reisinger, a Madison-based GOP consultant.

"Biden has to do more to get in the driver's seat," Reisinger says. "You can't beat somebody by hoping something other than you and your campaign defeats them. People in Wisconsin really do need to have clear, close contact with their candidates, and a message that really breaks through."

Unlike more urban state dwellers, Wisconsinites are not listening to the day-to-day cacophony in Washington, Reisinger says, so Biden must give Badger Staters a reason to vote for him, instead of hoping they vote against Trump.