Member Newsletter
If you’re continuing to rise and fall with the latest polls, you know that the NYT/Siena poll came out today with pretty unwelcome news for the Biden campaign. Biden is close to tied or just behind in the key midwestern states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but he is far back in the sunbelt states of Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. Possible preview: if Biden won the first three and lost the second three he would win the Electoral College with 270 electoral votes to Trump’s 268. These are bad numbers. There’s no arguing that. The NYT/Siena poll hasn’t been friendly to Biden, but it’s also a quality poll. I would recommend focusing on the averages which suggest a slightly, though not dramatically, different picture. Also, pay close attention to Likely Voter screens as opposed to Registered Voter screens.
I won’t lie to you. I don’t like the look of this poll. But the overall picture continues to be one in which the polls have continued to tighten, albeit not as quickly as I’d like, since around the beginning of March.
But I want to flag a different point: Congress.
We know that Democrats face an all but impossible challenge holding on to the Senate this year. But the current polls show they may actually pull it off. Democrats are ahead in most of the critical contests, even in states where Biden is struggling. One key example is Arizona. Biden’s behind but Ruben Gallego is ahead. It’s less dramatic in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But it’s the same basic story. Senators are running significantly ahead of Biden. Over the last month Democrats have also moved into a small lead on the congressional generic ballot, after being behind or tied since last summer.
One straightforward explanation is that voters just don’t like Biden or he’s not a good candidate. But that’s not the only explanation. Polls continue to show voters simply aren’t tuned in to the election at all. So these generic measures likely show a clearer read on the direction of the country going into the next election. You can come up with a lot of theories to explain it, frankly. But it’s worth focusing on regardless.
A final observation. The Israel-Hamas War continues to sow deep divisions within the Democratic coalition. Not just in terms of voters and social media wars but also deep in the mechanics of the party, with operatives, fundraisers, all of it. Beyond the substance of the situation, it has spurred another layer of recriminations over who’s losing the election. Is it normie pro-Biden Democrats who are letting him throw away the election over Israel, or grungy college protestors who can’t see the big picture in the November election? A number of polls over the last few days confirm the point that the number of voters who are making decisions on this issue are EXTREMELY small, well below a single percentage point of voters. The issues making it hard for Biden to hold on to the critical voting blocs that voted for him in 2020 are, far and away, the economy and immigration.
But that doesn’t mean that the war in Gaza doesn’t matter. At least in the short-term, the atmospheric effect is probably significant. The perception that all is not well in a presidential candidate’s own house, within his coalition, among his supporters, shapes perceptions of that candidate’s strength and ability to lead. That affects support levels even if the particular issue isn’t the most important to on-the-fence voters. In that sense I think Gaza is impacting the current snapshot of the race that we see in polls like this.
Of course none of this speaks to the substantive importance of Gaza. And in an election likely to be this close, almost any issue can make the difference in November. Totally plausible that one of these Blue Wall states in the Upper Midwest gets decided by a few thousand votes. But it’s still important to have an accurate understanding of which issues the voters in play are most focused on.