After Seeing These Polls, It’s Going to Take a Miracle (or Something) for Biden to Win

The Democrat attacks on Trump have brought to mind a scene from Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan–the only really good Star Trek movie ever made. Khan keeps trying to kill Kirk, and he keeps failing despite his supposedly being a superior being. He is bigger, smarter, faster, and a survivor, but somehow can’t beat the everyman captain. After yet another failed attempt to kill Kirk, one of the key memorable scenes plays out: What brought this to mind was the results of a Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll of the key swing states, which shows Biden’s support in the key swing states pretty much collapsing. Early polls…Snapshot in time……blah blah blah. All true. But man, this poll sucks for the senile old man. 🇺🇲 SWING STATES GE: MC/Bloomberg — InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) April 24, 2024 NORTH CAROLINA 🟥 Trump 51% (+10) 🟦 Biden 41% — 🟥 Trump 48% (+10) 🟦 Biden 38% 🟨 RFK Jr 5% 🟪 Other 2% — Generic Ballot 🟥 GOP 47% (+5) 🟦 DEM 42% —— NEVADA 🟥 Trump 51% (+8) 🟦 Biden 43% — 🟥 Trump 48% (+14) 🟦 Biden 34% 🟨 RFK Jr 7%… pic.twitter.com/EDI2cOJH0a Biden down 10 points in North Carolina? 8 points in Nevada? The only states he is in striking distance are Pennsylvania and Michigan, for God’s sake! Biden’s approval numbers are horrible–more people have a very unfavorable opinion of him than very and somewhat favorable combined. Same for Harris. Biden could of course beat Jeffrey Dahmer in a straight-up election battle, but Dahmer, thankfully, is dead. Now Trump isn’t exactly beloved by the masses either, although a larger fraction of the people strongly approve of him than Biden. The exact some number strongly disapprove, suggesting that if enthusiasm matters Biden has a problem. Of course, there is lots of other evidence that Biden has a problem, so who cares about this one factor? It seems that Trump gets most of the votes of everybody who doesn’t hate him, and Biden barely gets the votes of those who love him. People are not thrilled with all that Bidenomics, and Bidenomics is what is killing him. Notice how they no longer talk about “Bidenomics?” All that reassurance that we are thriving is not convincing anyone. Expect Biden, instead, to spend a lot of time talking about abortion, since 75% of voters think it is either a very important or somewhat important issue, and it is about the only issue out there where he has an edge. For how many people is this the single issue? I have no idea. Too many, but probably not enough to save Biden. The economy and immigration are the top two issues for people–the only ones breaking into double digits. Looked at another way, voters were asked who they trust to handle the important issues, and let’s just say that the confidence level that Biden enjoys is underwhelming. Biden does beat Trump on Climate Change, so there is that. 3% of voters call that their most important issue, so Biden may have a lock on them. In the aggregate of the swing states, Trump beats Biden by 5 points in a three-way race and 6 in a two-way, suggesting that who is on the ballot in these states may not matter. Even if Biden voters come home, Trump will likely pick up some of the third-party voters and still come out ahead. Biden’s border policies are killing him with swing state voters. There is zero ambiguity on this, which makes you wonder why his administration hasn’t pivoted at all on the issue. I have a guess: pivoting wouldn’t help him with voters who already know Trump will be better on the issue, but it would hurt him with his left flank. He can’t win, so don’t play. The crosstabs for the poll are very interesting, and I have to praise Morning Consult and Bloomberg for releasing all the data in every state. You can check out everything in all its glory here. Biden has been outspending Trump 5-1 in these states, and one has to wonder if any of that money has done any good. Well, wonder no more; in public opinion the answer is not at all, but a lot of that is going to building an infrastructure that can target voters and harvest votes in ways that don’t reflect the polling. It doesn’t just matter what everybody thinks; it matters who votes and who counts the votes. That is the only place that Biden’s money can do any good. He is going to get HIS voters out and hope not too many people who hate him will go to the polls. But here’s the rub: Biden barely won in the states that matter, and he has only become less popular since then. All the low-hanging fruit was harvested in 2020, and many of those voters who showed up for him won’t this time. Trump’s numbers have improved, and Biden’s have gone down. That makes ballot harvesting at the 2020 scale not nearly enough. This is why Democrats have exerted so much effort in blocking ballot security measures. They need wiggle room to juice the numbers. But there is only so much juicing you can do, and I am unsure whether this time it will be enough. Update:  Headline changed to better reflect the content … although we’re all curious what Dems have in mind next.