The rematch between Trump and Biden has arrived. Americans are processing.

After weeks of campaign ads, political speeches and voting in more than two dozen primaries, Americans are coming to terms with a reality many had tried to avoid: a rematch.

For months, large swathes of Democratic, independent and moderate Republican voters have been going through the familiar emotional stages, processing the prospect of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump duking it out again for months. They have faced denial, in the belief that other candidates would emerge, and bargaining, with fantasies of last-minute newcomers, nationally viable third-party candidates, and swift legal action. They fought the depression because the options were not available.

And now, slowly but surely, acceptance is starting to come.

“Have you ever heard people say, ‘You choose, but that’s not the choice you want’?” said Shalonda Horton, 50, as she walked into a polling station in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday to vote for Mr. Biden. “When I get in there, I’ll say, ‘Lord, help me.’”

In Los Angeles, Jason Kohler, who calls himself a progressive Democrat, said he would only vote for Biden with resignation. But he made peace.

“Lesser of two evils right now, you know?” said Mr. Kohler, 47. “Voting is already a duty for a citizen, so I feel like you have to do it.”

Complaints about politicians are as old as American politics itself. But pollsters and strategists believe something different is happening this year. Rarely have so many Americans been so unhappy with the direction of the country for so long. Rarely have so many voters said for so long that they want different leaders. Voters who hate both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are talked about so much that they now have their own political name: double haters.

And yet, as the primary calendar progresses, it is becoming increasingly clear that these voters can double, even triple, the hate, and yet their choices will not change. After the delegates were collected on Tuesday evening and Nikki Haley, Trump’s last remaining rival for the nomination, was out of the race, the rematch has arrived.

Many Republicans, of course, cheered. Trump has maintained a devoted following among his party’s core voters, with polls showing nearly half the party enthusiastic about his nomination. Only about a quarter of Democratic primary voters said the same about Mr. Biden, in the most recent survey by The New York Times and Siena College.

But even if the Democrats are not yet completely enthusiastic, they seem to have warmed to Biden in recent months. Forty-five percent of Democratic primary voters said he should not be their party’s nominee, the poll found, compared to 50 percent who expressed this view in July.

The signs that resistance is melting come from across the political world.

A series of high-profile Democrats and Republicans have rejected No Labels, a group that tried to broker a third-party ticket. “Saturday Night Live” has evolved from sketches parodying Democrats’ desire to find an alternative to Mr. Biden to skewering the party’s response to concerns about his age.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who once said Mr. Trump provoked the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, endorsed Mr. Trump on Wednesday.

Even Representative Dean Phillips, Democrat of Minnesota, seemed to mock his own failed attempt to become the alternative to Biden.

“Congratulations to Joe Biden, Uncomposed, Marianne Williamson and Nikki Haley for showing more appeal to Democratic Party loyalists than I did,” he said. wrote on X as votes were being counted Tuesday evening, before a second message was sent naming Jason Palmer, a Baltimore entrepreneur who defeated Mr. Biden by 11 votes in the Democratic caucus in American Samoa. Mr Phillips formally ended his bid the next day.

For both candidates, far more troubling grievances exist. In North Carolina, a key battleground state, Ms. Haley captured nearly a quarter of the Republican primary and “no preference” won 13 percent of Democrats. Efforts to encourage Democratic voters to withhold support from Biden by voting “uncommitted” turned out nearly one in five primary voters in Minnesota.

Joaquin Villanueva, 43, was one of them. As a college professor in Minneapolis, he is concerned that Mr. Biden is not doing enough to combat the possibility of another Trump term and wanted to send a message. He describes his current mood about the election as “feeling a bit trapped” by the options.

And then there’s the familiar, dejected feeling that Democrats are headed for another loss: “It feels like we’re reliving 2016 in a way.”

Mr. Villanueva is not alone: ​​Nineteen percent of registered voters in a New York Times/Siena College poll said they had an unfavorable view of both candidates. That number is higher than in 2020, but comparable to the 18 percent who expressed negative views of both Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, in 2016.

Historians are looking for further examples of such widespread apathy towards the party’s frontrunners. Lindsay M. Chervinsky, a presidential historian and senior fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, pointed to the elections of 1888 and 1892, when Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana ran against President Grover Cleveland. In 1888 Mr. Harrison won. Four years later, former President Cleveland defeated President Harrison.

“They were as uninspiring as candidates went. They were compromise figures who did not offend anyone,” she said. “Offending no one is not a great parallel. But as far as lack of enthusiasm goes, that’s about as close as it gets.”

Psychologists say the looming second chance is causing intense feelings of powerlessness and unease among Americans. Steven Stosny, a relationship therapist who coined the term “election stress disorder” to describe the feelings of anxiety and fear that many voters felt during the past two presidential elections, says the race between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump will be an “election stress disorder.” on steroids” – a race with all the baggage of 2020, along with new stressors on issues like the economy, immigration, the future of democracy and abortion rights.

“The human brain tries to avoid thinking about unpleasant things from the past,” he said. “Now that we can no longer deny or wish, the fear and resentment will return.”

Even without the flashbacks, voters will have reason to emphasize. Recent presidential elections have been decided by narrow margins in only a few states, and there is no reason to expect this one to be any different. Democrats are particularly concerned about third-party and independent candidates who could provoke a close race against Trump by gaining a few percentage points.

And then there are the intense political divisions, disinformation and familial divisions that are surfacing in the run-up to the presidential election. Not to mention the threat of violence that has hung over American politics since Trump’s supporters rioted at the Capitol.

“It will be weird,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who does not work for either presidential candidate. “It will be unusual and not particularly uplifting or enlightening.”

Sarah Longwell, a Republican political consultant who has battled Trump for years, said she has seen voters move through terms of electoral grief in her focus groups.

“We are not quite at acceptance yet. We are in a depression. Maybe full acceptance will be the moment they accept the nomination this summer,” she said.

Ms. Longwell plans to turn her attention to assisting Mr. Biden: “Acceptance. I have been in the acceptance process for some time.”