The New Yorker‘s Isaac Chotiner asks, “Is the Biden Campaign Running on False Hope?” The setup:
President Joe Biden trails Donald Trump by approximately one point in national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight. The gap is larger in most of the so-called swing states, including Pennsylvania (2.1 per cent), Arizona (4.3 per cent), Georgia (6.1 per cent), and Nevada (seven per cent). Moreover, in both 2016 and 2020, most polls ended up understating Trump’s support. This year, the head-to-head polls and Biden’s unpopularity have made many Democrats anxious about the coming election, but that feeling does not appear to have pervaded the White House. Axios reported last week that, “in public and private, Biden has been telling anyone who will listen that he’s gaining ground—and is probably up—on Donald Trump in their rematch from 2020.” (The Axios story says this sense of optimism is also shared by his “team.”)
This is followed by a !&A with Simon Rosenberg, “a longtime Party strategist who runs the Substack Hopium Chronicles,” who thinks Team Biden is right to be optimistic:
I think there has been a tendency in recent years among commentators to overestimate the strength of Republicans and to underestimate our strength. And we saw that play out in 2022. The fundamental dynamic of our politics, since the spring of 2022, has been consistent Democratic over-performance and consistent Republican underperformance. We saw it across the country in 2023. We’ve seen the same manifestation in 2024, with Trump struggling, and bleeding some of his votes, and underperforming polls in the primaries. And so, I think there’s just generally a view that, as people get closer to voting and have to go through that process of deciding who they’re going to get behind, Republicans lose ground and Democrats gain ground. And this has been particularly true after Dobbs. The whole political landscape in America changed fundamentally with Dobbs. And so any comparisons to 2016 and 2020, for example, I think are not valid because I think everything changed in 2022.
This is followed by a weird back-and-forth, with Chotiner claiming that the 2022 polls were largely accurate and even had a slight Democratic bias and Rosenberg strenuously objecting. After which, Rosenberg asserts Trump is a much weaker candidate today than he was in 2020 because
his performance on the stump is far more degraded. He’s clearly diminished. He’s far more erratic. He’s making a lot of mistakes that are hurting the campaign when he speaks. Second, his agenda is far more extreme, more dangerous, and will be far easier to exploit by the Democrats.
When Chotiner points to polling showing that 55 percent of Americans currently view Trump’s presidency as a success, Rosenberg thinks the campaign will change their minds:
There are six things now that are true about him that were not true in 2020, that all voters are going to come to know in the following months—they are that he raped E. Jean Carroll in a department-store dressing room [Trump, who has denied the allegations, was found liable for sexual assault in a civil case.]; that he oversaw one of the largest financial frauds in American history, and has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars for that; that he stole American secrets, he lied to the F.B.I., he shared those secrets with other people, it’s the greatest betrayal of our national security by a former President in all of American history; he led an insurrection against the United States, he led an armed attack on the Capitol, and he’s promised to end American democracy for all time if he’s in the White House in 2025; he and his family have corruptly taken more money from foreign governments than any family in American history; and sixth, and this is really important, is that he’s singularly responsible for ending Roe.
This is followed by more weird back-and-forth, with Rosenberg continuously dismissing polling results he dislikes while embracing those that show Biden making up ground.
While Chotiner got the better of the exchange, I think Rosenberg is ultimately right that the current polls are likely not terribly predictive. While one would think that voters would be incredibly familiar with both of these candidates, with both having served as President, and having run multiple presidential campaigns, the fact of the matter is that most people have largely tuned out since November 2020. It’s hard to believe that all of the things that have happened since won’t harm Trump’s standing among persuadable voters.
NYT pollster Nate Cohn (“The Shaky Foundation of Trump’s Lead: Disengaged Voters“) fleshes this out further.
The polls have shown Donald J. Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s one big flashing warning sign suggesting that his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks.
That warning sign: His narrow lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.
To an extent that hasn’t been true in New York Times/Siena College polling in the last eight years, disengaged voters are driving the overall polling results and the story line about the election.
President Biden has actually led the last three Times/Siena national polls among those who voted in the 2020 election, even as he has trailed among registered voters overall. And looking back over the last few years, almost all of Mr. Trump’s gains have come from these less engaged voters.
That’s not all that surprising when you think about it. Biden got eight million more votes than Trump, so it makes sense that a majority of those folks would back Biden in a rematch.
Importantly, these disengaged low-turnout voters are often from predominantly Democratic constituencies. Many continue to identify as Democratic-leaning and still back Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate, but they nonetheless are backing away from Mr. Biden in startling numbers. In our polling, Mr. Biden wins just three-quarters of Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t vote in the 2022 midterm election, even as almost all high-turnout Democratic-leaners continue to support him.
I could preach that either way. It’s quite possible that these folks will, as Rosenberg suggests, come home to Biden once the campaign highlights Trump’s massive defects. It’s also possible, though, that folks who are leaning Democrat for down-ballot races but Trump for President are really angry at Biden.
Mr. Trump’s strength among low-turnout and less engaged voters helps explain a lot of what’s strange about this election. It illustrates the disconnect between Mr. Trump’s lead in the polls and Democratic victories in lower-turnout special elections. And it helps explain Mr. Trump’s gains among young and nonwhite voters, who tend to be among the least engaged. His strength among young voters, in particular, is almost entirely found among those who did not vote in the midterms.
As I’ve noted previously, this realignment flips the script from longstanding mantras of American politics. For as long as I can remember, Republicans overperformed their polling because their demographics were more likely to show up. Now, it’s Trump and his ilk who have to persuade low-information voters to endure that inconvenience.
And here’s a key point:
It’s tempting to believe that less engaged voters are just like demographically similar highly engaged voters with the exception that they’re not paying such close attention. If that were true, Mr. Biden could count on disengaged young, Black and Hispanic voters to flock to his side once they tune into the race.
The Times/Siena data suggests it may not be so simple. Less engaged Democratic-leaning voters have distinct political views, and they get their political information from different sources. Even if the Biden campaign can reach these voters, it is not a given that they will return to the Democratic fold.
In the battleground states, Democratic-leaning irregular voters are far less likely to identify as liberal. They’re much less likely to say abortion and democracy are the most important issues, and instead they’re far likelier to cite the economy. They overwhelmingly say the economy is “poor” or “only fair,” even if they’re still loyal to Mr. Biden, while a majority of high-turnout Democratic-leaning voters say the economy is “good” or “excellent.”
The politically engaged tend to be more educated and affluent than the disengaged, for obvious reasons. And those voters have shifted to the Democrats as working-class voters, especially the White working class, have shifted to the Republican side. But part of Biden’s problem is that the rhetoric and policy proposals that energize the progressive base turns off disengaged folks who are natural Democratic leaners.
To be sure, Trump’s rhetoric turns off a lot of traditional Republicans. But a goodly number of the most engaged have already left the party and are in the same boat as the disaffected Democrats, likely to be turned off by the things that energize the True Believers.
One important factor might be media consumption. While Mr. Biden holds nearly all of his support from voters who consume traditional mainstream media — national newspapers, television networks and the like — the disengaged are far likelier to report getting their news from social media.
With these distinct views, it may not be so easy for Mr. Biden to win these voters back, even if their demographic traits and traditional partisan allegiances still suggest paths for the Biden campaign to do so.
The 2008 Obama campaign famously targeted Twitter and other social spaces. Presumably, Biden can do that as well. But, again, the problem is likely to be the message, not the medium.
The rest of Cohn’s piece focuses on the challenges of polling low-turnout voters, who are not surprisingly also less likely to respond to polls, and of deciphering which people who answer a given poll will actually show up to vote. I have no answer to either of those questions.
If I had to bet now, I’d say that Biden wins again in a race with lower turnout than in 2020 and that he probably loses a couple of states—with Georgia being the most obvious candidate—that he won in 2020. But, even aside from the possibility of cataclysmic events shaking up the landscape, it’s almost impossible to project a race where both candidates are so universally unpopular. There are more truly enthusiastic Trump voters than truly enthusiastic Biden voters. But there are also more people who intensely dislike Trump than intensely dislike Biden.
UPDATE: Longtime polling analyst Charlie Cook chimes in with “Do We Know Who’s Going to Vote This Year?” Short answer: nope. An excerpt from the longer answer:
We know that presidential reelection contests are usually referenda on the incumbent, more than a choice between two people. Voters are asked to determine whether they want to extend that president’s contract for another four years. It is pretty clear that the 2020 election was a referendum on Trump’s presidency, and that he lost that referendum. This year could be a referendum on Biden in the same way. But being the first contest between back-to-back presidents since 1892, it could also be a side-by-side comparison, as voters evaluate both men’s recent records. Trump could come out ahead in either of those scenarios.
But until we know who’s going to show up, it’s hard to tell. The polls show no ambiguity that most voters are unenthusiastic about their choice. “Out of 330 million people, is this the best we can do?” goes a popular refrain.
Think about those with little if any partisan or ideological predisposition. They may have real doubts and concerns about Trump’s character, behavior, values, and perhaps whether he has much respect for institutions and the rule of law. Substantively, only the abortion issue really rises to the surface for many of these people.
Conversely, doubts and concerns about Biden are more about his abilities and his judgment, his priorities and objectives. Most don’t doubt Biden’s morals, values, and intentions, but do wonder whether this has been the cruise they signed up for. Just as abortion is the substantive chink in the armor for Trump, it is age and health for Biden, who looks and acts even older than he is.
We have a group of voters who are not enthusiastic about either candidate, and many may well end up deciding not to decide. In some minds, not casting a ballot is becoming a very real and deliberate option, a way to show their displeasure with their choices and the nominees that the two parties have offered up. They look at the field of independent or third-party candidates and do not see a political knight in shining armor worthy of their support.
We’re basically just guessing at this point.
