Joe Biden WAS doing good and stabilized the last weeks of January….
Either tied or marginally ahead of Trump….
Then?
Today NBC is out with a poll with Trump back up?
What gives?
Last week was yet another ride on the PollerCoaster (this is my not-so-subtle pitch to check out my new Crooked Media podcast). In quick succession, a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll found Biden losing to Trump in all six states by between 3 and 8 points. Then Quinnipiac University released a poll that showed Biden beating Trump 50-44 nationally. And then CNN rained on our very brief parade with a national poll that showed Biden losing to Trump 49-45.
This week, we also got polls that showed
And early this morning, NBC News released a new poll that showed Trump beating Biden 47-42 — a 3 point increase for Trump since November.
Nauseous yet?
What the hell is going on? Why are the polls all over the map? And what, if anything, does it tell us about the outcome of the General Election?….
…
Pollsters make predictions about the electorate based on what voters tell them, demographics and the turnout in recent elections. In hindsight, it’s not surprising that the polls were so off in 2020. There had never been a modern election conducted in the middle of a pandemic. There were huge disparities between how seriously the parties judged the risk of voting in-person and the voters’ willingness to use a raft of new voting options like vote by mail, drop boxes, and early voting. The 2024 election has a similar set of unprecedented variables. For the first time in the modern era, a former president is running to reclaim his job. There is a historic level of dissatisfaction with both candidates. A record number of voters are expressing interest in voting for a third-party candidate. Finally, one of the candidates is facing the prospect of being convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison before the election.
What does all of this mean? Will the U.S. continue the trend of increasing turnout? If there is a demobilization, which side will it affect? What will the large swath of voters who don’t like Biden or Trump do? Will they eventually pick Biden or Trump, vote third party, or just stay home?
All of this creates challenges for pollsters. In their defense, the pollsters were historically accurate in 2022, but this is a much more difficult task….
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The broader trends of the recent polling tell me two things. First, Biden, at minimum, has stabilized, and things may be looking up as people’s views on the economy improve. Second, the polls are consistent with what we have long assumed — this is a very close and winnable race that will come down to less than 100,000 votes across a small handful of states.