Another Poll
The latest FNC poll has more good news for Biden.
Via Fox News: Fox News Poll: Biden tops Trump among likely voters in key states.
Democrat Joe Biden is ahead in three key states that President Donald Trump won in 2016, according to new Fox News statewide surveys of Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
[…]
Biden’s advantage comes from strong support among women and suburban voters. Moreover, suburban women in all three states trust Biden over Trump to handle coronavirus and policing/criminal justice.
[…]
The surveys, conducted after both national conventions ended, include results among likely voters for the first time this cycle.
The poll also has Mark Kelly (D) up 56-39 in his race to unseat Senator Martha McSally (R).
Like the polls I noted yesterday, the public is unhappy with Trump in regards to the pandemic and he is not gaining on the law and order issue, regardless of the narrative he is trying to create:
Biden benefits from more voters trusting him on coronavirus and policing/criminal justice. He is preferred over Trump on the virus by a wide 17-point margin and by 5 points on policing and criminal justice.
In regards to Wisconsin, it should be noted that this poll would take into account the effects of the recent unrest in Kenosha.
Women make all the difference in the Badger State. They favor Biden by 17 points, while men are about evenly divided (Trump +1). Plus, more Democrats (95 percent) support Biden than Republicans (86 percent) back Trump.
The president is ahead among rural voters (+4) and Whites without a college degree (+5).
[…]
Nearly half of Wisconsin voters, 45 percent, feel coronavirus is “not at all” under control, and that group picks Biden over Trump by 84-10 percent.
While fully acknowledging that there is still just over two months to go, all of the evidence points towards Biden being the favorite going into the election. Put another way, I have seen no evidence that Trump is favored The closest thing to bad news in recent days for Biden was a poll, that I noted yesterday, that his lead in Pennsylvania has narrowed.
And I think that despite the desire of both the Trump administration and the mass media to translate the protests into the basis of a new horse race story to say that Trump has a means of leveraging them into a real advantage, actual evidence of this has yet to emerge.
Well it is obvious this is all fake news or these polls are full of shy Trump voters or both or something like that…
The electoral math on this could end up being pretty interesting. 2016 was all about Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania (states that had previously gone to the Democrat 6 or 7 times in a row). Clinton lost because she let Trump take those states from her.
I have stated repeatedly that 2020 will be the same story, but I may very well be wrong due to Pennsylvania. Assuming the rest of the map stays the same, if Biden flips WI and MI back, Trump still wins 280-258. The big “however” here are several 2016 Trump states that Biden could flip that are all worth 11 more electoral college votes (AZ, NC, maybe GA and, of course, FL). So even if Trump wins PA, he still loses (the ol’ 269-269 tie is not even out of the realm of possibility).
However, one state that few are talking about worries me a little: Minnesota. Clinton won that in 2016 by less than 1%. Biden is only +3 there now in the latest poll and the polling averages there are less than 3%. Of all the 2016 blue states, I think MN may be the only one that is even close to flipping red in 2020. It will be interesting how much effort Trump puts in there.
I think at this point we can call the AZ race. I just can’t imagine a scenario where McSally goes from running 8-9 points behind, expanding that loss to double digits, and then claws back to win in the next 9 weeks.
@jfoobar:
The Former Reality Show Host has a real chance of flipping MN, his problem is that he needs to defend AZ, NC and FL.
@Neil Hudelson:
Particularly since she has been behind all along and has actually slipped in the polls. It is also hard to imagine Kelly winning by a healthy margin and Biden not taking AZ.
@jfoobar:
The latest poll of Minnesota is from a Republican pollster, so I wouldn’t put much weight on it. 538 shows a 6 point lead for Biden, which is probably more trustworthy than the RCP numbers.
In any case, Trump in Minnesota is like Biden in Texas: if he flips it, he’s not going to need it to win.
Liberal media. I’m waiting for the next poll from ONAN.
All that’s left for Trump at this point is the vote suppression and cheating. And you know there will be vote suppression and cheating. If Biden doesn’t win in a landslide, the election results will be contested.
@jfoobar:
Trump got a smaller share of the vote in MN than Romney, four years earlier. It’s just that Clinton’s share was a lot smaller than Obama’s. Exit polls indicated that the third-party vote was predominantly comprised of people who said they’d otherwise either have voted for Clinton or not voted at all (this was even true, somewhat counter-intuitively, of Gary Johnson voters). There was a recent poll indicating that 2016 third-party voters disproportionately favor Biden over Trump. And so far there’s no sign of any third-party candidates gaining traction this year (though Kanye has made the ballot in MN). In sum, I don’t think the closeness of the 2016 vote in MN is as meaningful as it looks.
On the other hand, the 2018 results did show potential warning signs. Two of the three House seats that flipped from D to R that year were in Minnesota, though two others in the state flipped the other way so it netted to zero. It was part of the recent pattern of rural areas becoming increasingly red, suburban areas increasingly blue.
The conventional wisdom is that it’s a state that’s gradually trending red, though it’s been close and competitive for most of the 21st century. Gore and Kerry only won it narrowly, and while Obama ended up running away with it in 2008 he often polled much closer. So I’m not sure things have changed as much as is being reported.
…waiting for the next poll from ONAN.
Once again, can someone explain why I’m no longer getting email notifications to thread updates?
(Yes I checked the notification box. No, it’s not going to my spam folder.)
@Kylopod:
I get them all the time and I don’t check the notification box.
@Mister Bluster:
I guess that explains the Falwell’s
The polls look very good. Not as good as they should look, but very good nevertheless.
Right now Biden is sitting on about 307 EVs, Trump has 231. That’s giving Biden all of New England minus one in Maine, NY, NJ, DE, MD, PA, VA, WI, MI, MN, OR, WA, CA, NV, NM, CO and FL.
By any standard Biden has the better hand. He can reach for AZ, NC, OH, maybe even TX. Trump has to claw his way back to 2016. To win the popular vote Trump has to take about 110% of the undecideds, and historically that does not happen, undecideds don’t break for the incumbent, certainly not more than unanimously.
Unknown factors include Republican voter suppression and outright voter fraud. The reason Trump is hysterical over mail-in votes is that you can’t hack the mail from Petrograd.
What other factors could change things? I honestly don’t know. If riots didn’t do it, what could? I don’t even thing starting a foreign war would help Trump, and I know his clear attempts to start a racial civil war are not going to fly. He has no more tricks up his sleeve, he’s performed his same tired act for four years and only his culties still buy any part of it. And the truth is the culties will be relieved – they thrive on self-pitying impotence.
We throw out the term “fascist” a lot to insult people – notably Drumph. One thing we don’t do is clarify precisely what that means. I’d propose starting with Umberto Eco’s 14 points. Eco’s much longer 1995 article at NYRB is a greater dive into each of these.
Stepping away from Godwin’s law, Italian fascism had no philosophy – Mussolini was pure rhetoric. Sound familiar?
Why does the graphic say “Biden/Clinton”? I get that it’s because they are trying to pretend they’re showing the voters who voted for Clinton, but I think it’s to convey the message that a vote for Biden is a vote for Clinton. It’s evil and insidious.
@Kylopod: There was a WordPress update this week, and that is the possible cause, although it works for me.
I have no idea save that maybe logging out and back in and/or clearing cookies and starting from scratch might help
@Michael Reynolds:
Nor mathematically 😉
@Gavin:..“fascist”
Back in the ’60s when I was allegedly in college everyone was a fascist who wasn’t in the SDS or a Black Panther or whatever group was the radical flavor of the day.
I don’t even bother with the term today.
The right wingers call the left wingers fascists and the left wing calls the right wing fascists.
On the rare occasion that anyone asks me what I think of Trump I just state that the KKK and the American Nazi Party support Trump and I don’t have any use for any of them.
@Blue Galangal: Because the second column is 2016 (it took me a second as well).
If you want recognition, you have to take a somewhat unusual position and then be right about it. Mine is that when everything is sliced and diced, this is the year that the Latino voters turn out and deliver AZ and FL for Biden. He’ll hold all the states Clinton won, there won’t be any faithless electors nonsense, and that’s enough. Anything else is just frosting on the cake.
@Mister Bluster:
One of the stories behind the Ramones’ “The KKK Took My Baby Away” is that Johnny (a Republican) stole Joey (a Democrat)’s girlfriend.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I have auto cookie delete and I still get notifications I don’t request.
@CSK: We just so very much want to make sure you are part of the conversation!
@Steven L. Taylor:
Awww…I’m so touched. I ‘m very fond of all the people here, too.
With one or two exceptions.
Seriously: The commenters (and hosts) here have to be among the best-informed and most literate–as well as sane–on the web.
@CSK:
You haven’t figured out yet that we’re all bots??
@Sleeping Dog:
Well, better the company of well-informed, literate, and sane bots than the company of badly informed, illiterate, and crazed real people.
@Sleeping Dog:
405 Method Not Allowed