Joe Biden HAS been seemingly lagging in the polls in swing states…..
The media HAS been singing the song that the President could be in trouble via the poll numbers ….
But?
Recently?
Several oldtime pollsters are beginning to sound a warning about reading TOO MUCH in these polls 6 months out from the November Election….
Many pollsters performed poorly in the last three national elections. They exaggerated Democratic support in the 2016 and 2020 presidential races and inflated Republican strength in the 2022 congressional midterms. Yet in the midst of another tight White House two seasons out from the election, they are again making confident, if changing, predictions about the outcome.
Even the 2022 debacle, when the widely forecast “red tsunami” in the House of Representatives became a trickle of actual Republican gains, hasn’t dented pollsters’ confidence – or news outlets’ and voters’ appetite for their suspect wares.
Now, with Joe Biden and Donald Trump locked in a close rematch, near-daily reports on its status are causing political whiplash.
On March 11, following weeks of poll results causing Democratic despair, Newsweek ran an article with the breathless headline: “Joe Biden Suddenly Leads Donald Trump in Multiple Polls.”
Two-plus weeks later, a Bloomberg article reported that Biden had tightened the races in key battleground states.
A closer look at those polls, however, showed the margins in virtually each case to be so narrow as to make them meaningless – both in national surveys and especially in polls of swing states with their smaller sample sizes. A good share of the preceding polls that showed Trump “ahead” had the same problems.
The problems with political polls are multiple….
…
Now, 80 or 90 percent accuracy might seem like pretty high scores, given the volatility of many elections. But consider that three firms, SurveyUSA, the University of New Hampshire, and Alaska Survey Research, were 100 percent accurate in 2022. Why can’t more firms reach that level? Also consider that 10 groups got less than two-thirds of their predictions right, which should not be a passing grade. And bringing up the rear were Morning Consult at 8 percent correct and Ipsos at 17 percent. Journalists vet their sources carefully, but these numbers suggest that they should be more careful in covering polls….
….
- Issue polls have their own problems. Immediately after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, many newscasters and reporters predicted the ruling would have minimal electoral impact. They cited old surveys showing that majorities of voters ranked the economy, health care, crime, and other concerns ahead of reproductive rights. Yet those polls failed to measure the intensity of anger the high court ruling would prompt among scores of women, whose increased turnout in subsequent elections has proven decisive….
Rakich summed up a core problem: “The percentage of correct calls made is simply a function of how close the polls are.”….
This is funny on so many levels.
Well?
U HAVE been the one to discount early polls as JUST EARLY POLLS….?
Some polling IS good
Some is just‘follow the leader’
Principle issue is Down ballots polling strong and Biden lagging on top.::
And somethings just do NOT ADD Up
20% Trump Black vote?????
Gee, it was just a few weeks ago that ,based on some poll( there are so many now ) you announced that Biden was “pulling away.”
And when I pointed out how silly a pronouncement that was?
You doubled down on it!
The only reason you published this is because Biden is now trailing in most of these polls.
Funny? Yeah it is.
Absolutely Jack….
My point EXACTILY….
As my piece points out….
Things go UP and DOWN…..
And some of the polling IS suspect….
Arizona…..
Lake is trailing by almost 10% points….
Some polls have Biden behind by almost as much?
Soooooo?
You vote for Gallego then vote for Trump?
Yea Right?🙄
What if the polls are NOT wrong?
Your team could be behind 4-10 and still be able to win the championship (as New Englanders know very well). And when you’re addressing the players, one should stress that. But that doesn’t mean the odds aren’t heavily against you at that point in the season. It’s reasonable this early in the campaign to say that nothing’s certain; and another to clutch at every wisp of hope and declare it the real truth. A difference of opinion makes horse races.
Yes…..
The polls COULD be right 5 months out….
Which is why i assume President Biden has been burning Air Force One jet fuel……
Again
The Dem down ballot juice will help him
“Reverse coattails” is not really a thing in politics.
Again CG?
Gallego IS almost 10% ahead of Lake in Arizona
His voters are gonna vote for Trump??????
Come ON😳
Well guys?
New Q poll HAS BIDEN AHEAD by a whopping 1% Nationally!
He’s SURGING!
From Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt newsletter for National Review:
Another Week, Another Round of Bad Swing-State Polls for Biden
This morning, Bloomberg News/Morning Consult unveiled new poll numbers from seven swing states, offering a glimmer of improvement here and there for President Biden, but showing Donald Trump remaining ahead in five of those states.
Biden’s up by a percentage point in Michigan, 46 percent to 45 percent. Perhaps the best news for the president is that this survey shows a tie in Nevada, where previous polling has had Trump ahead, sometimes by a wide margin.
But at the very end of the article, it reads, “The statistical margin of error is plus or minus 1 percentage point across the seven states; 3 percentage points in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania; 4 percentage points in Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and 5 percentage points in Nevada.”
Beyond that, Trump leads by one percentage point in Wisconsin, two percentage points in Pennsylvania, three percentage points in Georgia, and five percentage points in Arizona.
In North Carolina — which I don’t think is really a swing state this year — Trump is ahead, 49 percent to 42 percent. The preceding six polls in the Tar Heel State have Trump ahead by five percentage points, six points, two points, three points, and six points.
The contention from Joe Biden is that the polls are wrong, and in fact he’s quite popular and Americans are happy with the state of the country.
“The polling data has been wrong all along,” Biden griped to CNN’s Erin Burnett earlier this month. “How many of you guys do a poll, CNN, how many folks you have to call? We get one response. The idea that we’re in a situation where things are so bad, folks, I mean, we’ve created more jobs. We’ve made more in a situation where people have access to good paying jobs.”
Axios reported, “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.” At a $30,000–$50,000-per-head fundraiser at the home of former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in Palo Alto, Calif., Biden boasted, “While the press doesn’t want write about it, the momentum is clearly in our favor, with polls moving towards us and away from Trump.”
Does that sound right to you? That the press doesn’t want to write about a Democratic incumbent having momentum against Donald Trump?
Now, both nationally and in swing states, there are a lot of pollsters in business. Indisputably, some are better than others. And you can definitely find outliers that have Biden in better shape here and there.
But every pollster has Biden’s job-approval rating in lousy shape. This morning, the new national Reuters-Ipsos poll “showed just 36 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance as president, down from 38 percent in April. It was a return to the lowest approval rating of his presidency, last seen in July 2022.”
If only a bit more than a third of Americans think Biden is doing a good job, would you expect him to have a lot of momentum in the presidential race? Yes, Trump is a deeply flawed candidate, but he’s also the most likely alternative.
Ezra Klein is among those on the left side of the aisle trying to sound the alarm for the Biden campaign: “To the extent polls have been wrong in recent presidential elections, they’ve been wrong because they’ve been biased toward Democrats. Trump ran stronger in 2016 and 2020 than polls predicted.”
Is Biden campaigning like a guy who’s well ahead? Maybe Biden’s latest round of race demagoguery is standard-issue for the man who told African Americans that Mitt Romney was going to put them back in chains. Does cutting off aid to Israel seem like the kind of move you make when everything’s going well? Does the administration’s obsession with forgiving student-loan debt suggest confidence in the likely turnout among young voters?
Ok
I read the long comment….
As in everything with humans?
There ARE various answers to a question….
Joe Biden IS NOT getting his ass kicked
But he ain’t running where he should be….
Again
Echoing or buddy Jack here
It’s early
Of course the media herding for a horse race IS a prominent factor……
As in other cases?
I FIRMLY BELIEVE that the voters for Biden WILL come home for him once AGAIN against him in place of a convicted felon, sexual offender that wants to subject the world to his crazy assed shit AGAIN……
People gotta be reminded of how awful things were……
Biden and Democrats WILL join the media in the last lap with THAT…
Bet on it….
Yes, apparently there will be Trump/Gallego voters, as crazy as it may seem to you. There are also other factors at play though.
For one thing, the Senate race is a two person contest while the Presidential race has other options. So RFK Jr. may be taking votes from Biden in AZ that are also going to Gallego.
Kari Lake is considered a weaker than Trump because she has some particular vulnerabilities. Then, there is the factor that despite his liberal record, people in AZ may be planning to vote for Gallego, a young Hispanic ex-Marine, who has been moving to the center and not voting for Biden, an unpopular incumbent, struggling with maintaining what he needs from Hispanic voters, and who is looked upon as elderly, and who has been moving to the left in recent months.
all sorts of down ballot Republican candidates outperformed Trump in 2020 and right now, it looks like a lot of down ballot Democrats are poised to outperform Biden.
Two old timers that aren’t particularly popular, eh?
I disagree
The amount of cross or ticket splitting would be next to nothing…..
Again?
Unfortunately…..
Biden IS gonna need more down ballot voting then others
His people also did him no favors by keeping him away from the media
Added is he’s running against a 3 Ring Circus
In the end
Joe Biden doesn’t and never will project the force of Trump
THAT works against him….
No excuse
there’s cross-ticket voting, people voting for a third party in a race, people not voting in a various race.
The bottom line is that Lake is weaker than Trump and Biden is weaker than Gallego in Arizona.
I will say again, if beating Trump is so important to the future of the country (as I agree it is), then Democrats probably should not have gambled on running Biden again. National polls really do not matter, and Democrats should have a built in edge in those. All that matters are the swing states to get to 270 and everything is on the line because both parties chose to go with horribly unpopular candidates.
I will say there is about a 25 percent chance that Trump gets convicted of any of the charges in NYC in June. A hung jury is the most likely outcome. He will benefit politically, at least in the short-term from that.
Nonetheless, even if he is convicted of anything in NY, it will work to his political benefit, at least in the short-term.
The NYC case was a mistake to bring and it distracts from the much more serious and more consequential cases that Trump is facing.
If Biden is to win, which is possible, it won’t be apparent he is favored until very pretty late in the campaign. It will pretty much take a vicious scorched Earth campaign against Trump. It will be a very ugly time for America leading up to the vote and in the aftermath, regardless of who wins.
The Republican Convention probably will not do much to help Trump. The Democrats’ convention probably will not help Biden, and if it is as chaotic inside and outside the hall, as I expect it to be, it could probably hurt the party.
It is imperative for Biden to not under-perform debate expectations, if debates actually happen, and for him to not have any sort of medical issue, no matter how minor, before the voting.