America’s election cycle is topsy-turvy. What would normally be down is up – at least as far as the two main candidates and their popularity goes.

The number of criminal charges against Donald Trump keeps stacking up – but so do his poll numbers in the Republican primary and his pile of campaign money. The former president is defying gravity. The current president, Joe Biden, has the opposite problem – he can’t seem to get lift-off. No matter how well the country is performing, he doesn’t rise in the polls.

Biden is presiding over an economy that is the envy of almost every country in the world. Inflation is coming down (at 3% it’s less than half what it is in the EU or UK), unemployment is also low (3.5%) and fears of a recession are receding. Americans are still being squeezed by higher interest rates and the prices that remain above pre-Covid levels, but the president is travelling around the US this summer reminding people that key parts of his agenda, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, have pumped trillions of government dollars into the US economy.

But Biden doesn’t seem to be getting much credit for the economic upswing. A recent Reuters poll shows 54% of Americans disapprove of the job Biden’s doing – that’s actually a couple of points worse than in March, when a recession looked more likely and inflation was higher. And it’s significantly worse than the 32% who disapproved of his record when he was inaugurated in 2021. The economy picks up, his poll numbers head down. Good news isn’t good news.

Part of the problem is that many of Biden’s big spending programmes are still in the approvals phase. Administration officials I’ve spoken to hope that as the money gets dispersed into projects around the country, the regular rules of politics will resume and people will start to see the benefits of what the president has done and reward him for it. That’s why the White House dubbed his plan “Bidenomics”. But there’s a risk to that. If inflation goes back up and a recession re-emerges then Republicans will have been given a handy slogan for their negative campaign ads.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump faces the opposite situation – bad news isn’t bad news.

“If the question before voters is should Trump be in the Jail House or the White House? Trump wins.” That was the text I received from a Trump associate the evening he was indicted in Georgia on charges of interfering in the state’s 2020 election.

In normal times the question of jail time wouldn’t seem to be great news for a presidential candidate. But here’s the same associate’s counterintuitive thinking: “I can actually sell that a lot easier than ‘Biden sucks and doesn’t deserve a 2nd term’.” To be clear, this is different from a “he’s innocent” argument.

It’s pretty stunning that people in Trump’s orbit even think this could be a positive thing for them. Stunning but, in this down-is-up world, not entirely surprising. Those strong primary polls, and the campaign donations flowing in suggest that Republican voters like Trump more despite, or perhaps even, because of his legal problems.

Those on his campaign are betting that voters in decisive areas of the country, like the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, would be so appalled at the idea of sending a former US president to prison that they would vote to elect Trump back into the White House, possibly in the hope that he could get himself out of legal jeopardy.

But it’s too early to know yet if this is how voters will really see it come November 2024.

Recent polls of the electorate as a whole show a majority of Americans think Trump committed a crime. The majority also says they won’t vote for him.

“I think his staff recognises the danger that he is in right now, but they want to hold sway over the Republican party,” says Anthony Scaramucci, who was Trump’s communications adviser for a brief period when he was president.

“For this reason they are going to keep him in the campaign for as long as possible, but I do think he eventually drops out as a result of the combination of legal pressure and pressure from his family.”

This is not the same as saying they are thrilled about Joe Biden. They aren’t. Even Democrats question whether he’s too old to be running for a second term.

One thing that is sure about this campaign, is that it will continue to be extraordinary.