He’s beaten his Republican rivals and is ahead in the polls. But Trump is vulnerable | Jonathan Freedland

I found his devotees fervent, but many Americans can't stand the man - and that gives Joe Biden a way to win

You'd think a week spent in the snow and ice of New Hampshire, watching Donald Trump stroll to a double-digit victory over his last remaining Republican rival, would have left me filled with angst about the presidential election in November. Sure enough, given that a second Trump presidency would have a truly disastrous impact on the US and the world, the fact that the now near-certain rematch of Trump and Joe Biden remains a coin flip", in the private assessment of one of America's foremost electoral analysts, still makes my palms go clammy.

But to my surprise, I left the frozen American north-east not hopeful, exactly, but lifted by the thought that Trump is weaker, and Biden stronger, than this week's headlines - or the latest polls showing the current president six points behind the previous one - might suggest. Now when I hear the words coin flip", I react like Jim Carrey's character in Dumb and Dumber, when told that the odds of him winning over the woman of his dreams are one in a million: So you're telling me there's a chance."

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist