It's too early etc. etc., but I thought everyone could use a little dose of good news this morning. Joe Biden has been picking up support lately:
This is from the Economist, which updates its poll average weekly.
The big caveat, of course, is that this doesn't say anything about the polls in swing states, which are hard to track but still seem to be generally in Trump's favor. So any celebration is limited to one cookie, OK?
An even bigger caveat is that it's still March and the election isn't until November. Find something significant to write about, m'kay? Leave the tea leaves and clickbait to the MSM.
Yes. This. Obsessively sniffing at polls that are basically meaningless now is a waste of mental energy for everybody.
look at the trend line. it's not just that biden has inched ahead, the trend has been moving strongly in his favor for about two months now. as has been said, many times, many ways, the more you see trump the more you dislike him. and we'll be seeing him plenty over the next six or seven months.
The Hur report came out Feb 5, which was the beginning of the media’s “Biden too old” narrative going completely bonkers.
Yet it was almost exactly then that Biden’s surge in polls began.
Not sure what to make of it but that’s what the chart shows.
"Surged"?
The media get more clicks when it's a horse race, so they are constantly presenting the campaign as neck and neck whether it is or not. 7 1/2 months of this to look forward to.
Not just the media, I think. The Democratic Party gets more money from contributions when it's a close race.
It will be close, although I don't see how that can be when Trump keeps calling the jailed Jan 6 rioters "hostages" and "patriots".
It didn't need to be this close if Biden had not decided to run again.
Biden is the strongest potential Dem running according to polls.
Biden is the strongest potential Dem running according to polls.
Zaphod ignores any and all evidence contradicting their preferred narrative. Don't waste your pixels.
That reply should have been to Seahohm Dem. But I am perfectly happy to spend my pixels on you, Jasper.
How surprising is that when no prominent Democrat has decided to challenge him?
How surprising is that when Biden has the money and support of the Democratic establishment?
We will never know how strong an alternative candidate would have been had Biden done the sensible thing and stepped aside to allow younger candidates to run.
Stronger than "still behind-Biden", I am certain.
Which non-incumbent Democrat do you think would be stronger? I don't know if there's an answer, only that it isn't Gavin Newsom.
Too early.
Climatologists are very worried about temperatures of the North Atlantic - they are at average mid-May levels already. Hurricane season starts June 1. If Florida is "leveled," while the red parts of the state blame Biden even if he comes to the rescue with the Feds? Yes.
And I know you love the charts, peep at the one in this post: https://thinc.blog/2024/03/22/how-economists-have-underestimated-on-climate-impacts/
Per Biden's campaign, as soon as it was clear that Trump became the GOP nominee (at least at this point in the season, after gaining enough delegates), people's true opinion of the race and of the candidates would solidify.
It's never too early to air audio clips of Trump's speeches over videos of violence on J6, of quotes about Trump wanting the military to shoot Americans over videos of violence used against peaceful protesters in DC, and of Trump's posts denigrating immigrants with videos of immigrants in cages.
At the end of the videos, Biden's face appears and he says, "America, this is not us."
Alternatively, SuperPACs close their videos of voices of people with different accents -- southern, northern, NY, Boston, west coast, Hawaii, and different foreign accents, "This is not the America I want."
Not sure how the Economist average of polls can be so different from the average of polls at RealClearPolitics. For a 2-way race, RCP shows Trump up by +2, and the graph does not show Biden gaining on Trump.
Also, RCP average of polls shows Trump up by +4.3 in a 3-way race (Biden, Trump, Kennedy).
The RCP results in both 2016 and 2020 lined up pretty well with the actual election results. I'd be as happy as anyone if the Economist has a more accurate methodology, but I'm a bit skeptical. Maybe Kevin can explain.
Yes, the Economist polls are good ones, I think. But they are just one pollster. There is so much scatter and random error in polls that averages are much more meaningful. And even averages will contain error.
But, if we are looking at single polls, Emerson is ranked #9 out of about 300. Their latest has Trump up 4 points in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and tied with Biden in Michigan. They also have Whitmer, who has done no campaigning, up by 5 over Trump in Michigan.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/
Arizona Trump +8 with Kennedy running
Michigan Trump +5 with Kennedy running
Wisconsin Trump +4 with Kennedy running
Georgia Trump +4
Pennsylvania Trump +3
Nevada Trump +2
I've said that the night Trump clinched the nomination was his high point. There's just no good news anywhere for him. Trump wants a win so big it will be impossible to rig it. He's gonna get that wish. Just not the way he thinks it will be.
There's just no good news anywhere for him
I've long believed—and continue to believe—that Biden should be the favorite to prevail in the end. This is mostly based on what I view the likely trajectory of the economy to be over the next six months, and how national conditions in general have tended to affect presidential elections in US history.
But many things could yet go wrong for Joe, especially on the foreign policy front. I think what transpired in Moscow two nights ago is a very serious risk for the US, and it's anybody's guess how such an attack on American soil would impact the race. I fear the days of the inevitable "rally around the flag" effect are long gone.
On a brighter note, one potential risk factor for all incumbent presidents—the arrival of recession—plainly seems to have vanished to a probability of near zero in terms of affecting the election outcome . The economy is clearly too robust for a major swoon in the immediate future. And even if one were to arrive later in 2024, it doesn't look like it could affect the vote: normally our recessions are identified only in the rear view mirror, so, if the economy began to slow down a bit this summer and we finally entered a recession in, say, October, we'd likely not see much media coverage of this development until well into 2025.
I’m not so sure the “rally around the flag” effect would have been a thing after 9/11 if Gore was president.
Exactly. Americans don't "rally around the flag" for a Democrat. Not since FDR. Republicans will reflexively oppose, because that's most of what the party is these days. Far lefties will blame "the Establishment", even if it's on their side.
Only mainstream-type Democrats will display what we used to call "patriotism." And of course, they'll do it whether an R or a D is in the White House.
The only poll that matters is the one on November 5th.
Yes, or course. But that a refrain that is most usually heard from by losers
I’ll never feel comfortable as long as so many people think a guy like Trump was/would be a good president. Nothing wrong with supporting a Republican. But the popularity of such a toxic person and traitor who pretty much spits on basic decency and anything good that this country represents shows a serious sickness in our people with which I will never be comfortable. Trump goes away or is jailed, that sickness remains.
👍👍👍👍👍
I think that people are increasingly recognizing that it’s a binary choice between Hitler and Biden. I think that’s what is moving the polls slightly in Biden’s favor. What troubles me is that 30-40 percent of Americans seem to think that Hitler was a great president and would be again.
Not to worry. As soon as the two DOJ cases against Trump are over, with both trials ending in conviction, Biden will surge to a 15 point lead that will last up to election day.
Relax.
Neither federal case will be tried to a jury verdict by November. And Trump’s basically guaranteed an acquittal in the Florida espionage case because he’s got the judge in his pocket. The Georgia case is so untracked that Trump may well be acquitted before the prosecutors recover their composure but I don’t see any way for them to get it sufficiently together before the election.
The only case that might go to trial before November is the NYC case and that’s looking doubtful. The SDNY and the FBI seem to have saved Trump’s bacon yet again with a massive and perfectly timed document dump. Not surprising since the offices have always had, let us say, a soft spot for Donald Trump. We should know more about when the case will be set for trial on Monday.
I live in Michigan and I expect Biden will lose here. The useless Arabs in Dearborn are going to vote trump or stay home. Rural Michiganders are truly idiots. Trailer trash and gun nuts. Blacks are ambivalent and don’t really see trump as any kind of threat. So there you go. Another win by votes nationally and loss by the electoral college.
Hamas sympathizers taking out Biden too. 😂
DFTT
I also live in Michigan and I agree that the rural Michiganders are mostly beyond the reach of intelligent reason. I was talking yesterday to an amateur astronomer in Canton, but he lives in the boondocks, about the future, and he was convinced that Biden is dead set on wrecking the world.
I have a really hard time understanding how "set in stupid" some people are. He's MAGA and according to him, the economy was great under Trump and no one died of COVID, and please don't confuse him with the facts.
If Trump took away his Social Security and set him up in front of a firing squad, he would still be rationalizing his choice of MAGA, right to the very end. He's one of those guys who loves Big Brother Trump.
Let me just say that I've learned a lot of scary stuff about people in the past ten years. I read "1984" in high school, but I just didn't think it could happen here.
Wasn’t this past week when RFK Jr. was supposed to have announced his VP pick? And wasn’t No Labels going to step out of their smoke-filled room with a candidate looking for his 15 minutes of fame?
If either of these ‘movements’ manages to get their shit together, it’s going to make this election even harder to predict.
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