General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: We may be in trouble [View all]All Mixed Up
(597 posts)For one, what non-Biden Democrats do is irrelevant because they're not running national campaigns vs Donald Trump (maybe just the idea of MAGA). In reality, Trump has out-performed polling both times he's been on the ballot (2016 and 2020). Both elections indicate that Trump does better than Generic Republicans and why going off polling that doesn't include Trump as a candidate means nothing.
As for the primary results, again irrelevant or at least an incomplete understanding of the data.
Trump's opposition in the primaries are largely tied to Democratic voters crossing over and voting Haley. These are voters who were never going to vote Trump.
In closed primaries, like Texas as an example, Trump is running away with the nomination.
Also, general election polling pretty much consistently shows Trump at his 2020 total, or far closer to it than Biden. And it's much worse when third party candidates are added.
Look at Georgia. In the latest Emerson poll, Trump leads by four when it's a two-person race. But when third party candidates are added, Trump's lead jumps to 7.
I get it. Polls suck. But these margins are big. If they were narrower, I'd buy that polling is too erratic to be taken at face value.
But three Georgia polls have been released the last few weeks with Trump +7 in every one involving a multi-party race. This isn't just polling being off, it would have to be off by a major amount.
And I know there is a narrative that polling was off significantly in 2022. Not true.
Just look at Oz vs Fetterman.
The final polls had Oz up .5 (but there were polls that had Fetterman up).
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2022/pennsylvania/
So polls were off by five points on average.
And that was the high-end - yet still below Biden's margin vs Trump in Georgia.
In other close states in 2022, the polls were correct in Arizona:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2022/arizona/
And Georgia:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/senate/general/2022/georgia/walker-vs-warnock-runoff
And off by only 2 points in Nevada:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2022/nevada/
That doesn't even get into the generic ballot in 2022 which matched the total national vote pretty accurately:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2022-generic-congressional-vote-7361.html
Biden definitely has some work to do.