Has The Election Turned A Corner?
President Joe Biden meets with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Monday, June 17, 2024, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
It is premature to say that the presidential race is over, but there was a major milestone recently as Joe Biden took the lead in the FiveThirtyEight polling average for the first time. The shift comes as Biden closed the gap after Trump’s first felony conviction in late May. FiveThirtyEight’s election model was unveiled a few weeks ago and, taking other electoral indicators into account in addition to polling, the model gave Biden a slightly greater chance of victory even with tighter polls. As I write this, the model still shows a tossup with Biden having slightly better odds.
The Real Clear Politics average, which is typically more friendly to Trump, also shows a tight race. The RCP average showed a decline for both Trump and Biden in early June and currently stands at Trump +1.
It took some time for the effect of Trump’s conviction to trickle into polling, but it now seems that Trump’s legal woes were not baked into the cake. They were also not, as many Trump supporters claimed, a boon to Trump’s campaign. (The next time the pro-Trump pundits determine anything will be bad for Trump will be the first.)
Veteran Republican strategist Karl Rove agreed on Fox News, saying, “There’s been a trend since the… May 30th guilty verdict in the New York case” away from Trump and toward Biden.
The shift extends beyond popular vote polls to the Electoral College, because my readers are all aware that the national popular vote is meaningless. The FiveThirtyEight model currently predicts a 272-266 victory for Biden.
Where Trump led in the swing states a month ago, the race has tightened in the battleground states as well. The swing states, as you would expect, are very close and mostly rated as tossups, but there has been movement from a month ago when Trump was on top in almost every battleground. FiveThirtyEight ranks the closest states (in order) as Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina. At this point, the forecast is for Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan to go blue, which would yield 270 electoral votes for Biden, but these states are all tossups with predicted margins of less than three percent.
Republicans may cry foul that Trump’s decline is tied to his conviction. The rub is that Republicans knew that one or more felony convictions were likely when they voted for Trump in the primaries. The Former Guy was indicted in four separate cases before the primary season began. Convictions were a risk that they took. Republican voters might not have emotionally accepted this risk, but they knew about it.
There are also a couple of additional factors to consider. One is that Trump and MAGA tend to underperform their polling. Politico pointed out in March that polling error in the primaries may not translate into polling error in November, but it is a data point to consider.
And then there’s Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the third-party candidate. Currently, RFKJR is polling at about eight percent and is drawing from both Trump and Biden. I’ll eat my hat if he gets eight percent in the general election, but the question is who his candidacy will hurt more.
Trump supporters seem to realize that their candidate is in trouble. I’m seeing an increasing number of allegations that Democrats are registering illegal immigrants as voters or up to other shenanigans.
As David Limbaugh posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter, “While many stay tunnel-focused on the polls, which are mostly encouraging, I can’t quit thinking about reports that Dems are registering illegals among other sorts of chicanery.”
Of course, evidence in the “reports” cited by Limbaugh is sketchy if it exists at all. A report by the Washington Times found 99 ballots cast by illegals since 1996, about a third of whom registered as Republicans. These illegal voters should be prosecuted, but the evidence falls far short of evidence of massive fraud and would be unlikely to have influenced the outcome of even one local election.
It seems more likely that what we are seeing is the same preemptive excuse-making that we saw in 2020. That year, Republicans laid the groundwork for Trump’s false claims of a stolen election long before the ballots were counted. For that matter, Trump also made claims of election fraud in 2012 and 2016. In this area, he’s consistent if nothing else.
In the past, these conspiratorial fantasies have hurt Trump and other MAGA candidates with moderate voters. It may be that as Republicans turn up the crazy, they scare more and more voters away.
As I said earlier, this year’s election is far from over, but the polls do show a tightening and a shift towards Joe Biden. Longtime readers will remember that one of the basics of reading polls is to look for trends rather than focusing on topline numbers. It will take time to see if this trend persists.
Given the state of the race, this week’s debate [see “Will Trump debate]” is taking on a larger-than-normal importance. And in this case, Republicans are also taking steps to explain away a disappointing performance by their candidate. From attacking CNN and the moderators to alleging that President Biden will use drugs such as cocaine or steroids to enhance his debate performance, the Trump campaign seems to be working to lower expectations for a Trump victory and pump up President Biden in the dustup in Atlanta.
I’ve been predicting that voters would come back to Biden for a long time. As I’ve said over and over, when Americans take a close look at Trump, they don’t like what they see. Four months prior to the election, they may also finally be listening to what Trump is saying, which ranges from frightening threats of revenge to promises to expand the police state to hunt down illegals to rants about sharks and batteries on boats.
For many, if not most Americans, the upcoming election is a choice between a rock and a hard place. Or rather, as The Former Guy might say, between a shark and a battery.
My bet is that America will choose to avoid the shark.
“Let’s hold the election… wait for it… wait for it… *NOW*!”
I wonder what a post-primary convention will look like for the Dems now, though. What will the “come to Jesus” discussions look like in the back rooms for those who dodged serious challengers?
And what will the conventions look like?
The Democrats have a real opportunity to not be nuttier than the Republicans. Heck, they may even have a Sista Soulja moment teeing up when school starts again. All they have to do is not be nuttier than the Republicans.
Easy peasy.Report
It’s always tempting to see patterns and bellwethers and omens but it is really just too soon to tell.
America is, and as been for at least a decade, in a crisis where democracy and the rule of law itself are being debated and the outcome is balanced on knifepoint. The idea that Trump is some sort of aberration or temporary flash in the pan is no longer tenable.
We can’t speak any more of Trump so much as Trumpism, the authoritarian mix of Christian Nationalism and 3rd World caudillo style petty dictatorship.
This is openly embraced by at least 40% of the electorate, with another soft margin of unknown size of those who are indifferent to it.
The election is still going to be razor tight no matter which way it goes and there doesn’t seem to be any breakthrough movement anywhere on the horizon.
This is going to be a long ugly fight.Report
Speaking of Nate Silver, he has his own “Silver Bulletin 2024 presidential election forecast“.
Sam Wang’s last post at the Princeton Election Consortium was November, 2022.Report
Yeah Nate is saying it’s 60% in Trumps favor based, strictly, on the polls of swing states. Not a reassuring read at all.Report
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE POPULAR VOTE?!?
Anyway, my read of what’s going to happen in the election is muddled as heck. I have no idea what’s going on and my neighborhood has *ZERO* political signs that weren’t there back during lockdown (a couple of “in this house” signs have moved from THE MIDDLE OF THE YARD to a more tasteful “between the bushes”).
No political bumper stickers on the cars.
All of the tea leaves that I use to measure the temperature just aren’t there.
That’s good for the incumbent, right?Report
Maybe this is just me but so far this feels like the most invisible presidential election of my adult life. Biden has been notably invisible during his presidency (I’m sure we all have our pet theories as to why), and Trump has been tactically invisible due to the probably correct assumption that it could only hurt him during the GOP primary. My gut says that means things are more wide open than anyone would have thought but I am not sure how that bodes for either candidate.Report
Yeah. The first debate is tomorrow… we haven’t even had a convention. We don’t know who Trump’s VP is. (Though I suppose that that doesn’t matter.)
It’s weird.Report
My baseless speculation that I’ve seen echoed a few places is that this debate at such an early time in the campaign (pre-convention) is a safety release valve for the Dems. In the event that Biden tanks (in realtime or in subesequent polls) he’ll refuse the nomination at the convention.
To be fair, if/when Trump tanks on the debate … well, nothing. Those folks are riding that nuke into the ground.Report
Heheh, Ezra is gonna keep throwing that ball at the wall until it sticks (or the convention is over).Report
Here is my problem with the Biden is too old crowd, they never name alternatives, it is all Johnny Unbeatable. The truth is that the most likely alternative to Biden as the candidate is…Kamala Harris. And I would bet money if that happens, Ezra would be “Noooo…not like that….”
I have very little patience for people playing Backup QuarterbackReport
Sounds like a Dem problem, not a ‘Biden too old crowd’ problem.
I don’t know the Dem world of politicians… but surely there’s someone East of the Rockies and West of the Blue Ridge that would be serviceable.
To the extent that Ezra (if he’s the leader here) is talking about yeeting Biden (do we still yeet things?) — then I think he’s likely wrong.
The way it would ‘work’ in my baseless speculation is Biden ‘wins’ the nomination, then nominates a unity candidate… whoever that might be… Kamala remains VP (cause she’s not the way out of this box) as part of the ‘unity’ play.
If there’s not a single person who could be a better Biden-ish candidate then there are just an awful lot of eggs in a very fragile basket.Report
One of my dear friends listens to right-wing radio and the current right-wing conspiracy theory is that Biden will be replaced by Michelle Obama.
And she will be unstoppable.Report
Heh. I know *I* wouldn’t trade post-Presidential life and all its perqs for a second go on the merry-go-round… but hey, who knows?Report
No it is a pundit problem.
Biden was picked by the Democratic Party voters to be its nominee in 2024. The ones that tried to challenge him failed spectacularly and despite the paranoid dreams of the internet, other politicians were not bullied into running, they choose to be team players.
If you think Biden is too old and the Democrats would have been better off with someone else, it is your responsibility to name names.
If Biden and Harris were swallowed by a black hole, there are plenty of Democrats that could replace them. They decided not to run in 2024 to show solidarity and a unified front for their commander in chief and I am inclined to think this is more correct than incorrect as a course of action because it shows a united front.Report
As I say, I don’t follow Dem politics… but If I grab a list of popular Dems East of Rockies and West of Blue Ridge — then here are some names that Biden would then hand select and present as the way forward.
Popular Govs (as of 2022, last list I could find)
Net Approval, State Lean, and PARG(?)
KY Andy Beshear D +24 R+27 +51
KS Laura Kelly D +20 R+21 +41
LA John Bel Edwards D +10 R+21 +31
CO Jared Polis D +22 D+6 +16
NV Steve Sisolak D +10 R+3 +13
MN Tim Walz D +11 D+2 +9
MI Gretchen Whitmer D +4 R+2 +6
If one must simply present names…Report
Replacing Joe Biden with a person not named Kamala Harris would piss off an actual base of the Democratic Party.Report
I see it as an endless variation of the “I will vote for a Democrat just not that Democrat”.Report
Report
I actually think David’s take that people who are doubtful about voting for Trump now (and aren’t proclaiming support for him now) are unlikely to break towards him as he becomes more visible seems extremely plausible. That said I have none of the (in hindsight false) confidence I had in ’16.Report
My totally baseless conjecture is that Trump- as-known-quantity is the biggest x factor. I also think the biggest underrated factor in 2020 is that people were just kind of sick of seeing him on TV all the time.Report
Yes, and as the election heats up Trump, in theory, should appear on their TV screens more and more.Report
Here’s my theory about 2024 that mimics a theory I had about 2016:
It is possible for there to be plenty of stuff on your television that you’re going to be sick of.
“Trump Trump Trump” will, indeed, be one of those things.
But September is coming.
And October promises to be interminable.Report
Err yes, but I don’t think I see your point.Report
Here’s a story from three days ago. Bragg dropped a bunch of charges against the students who were putting their reputations on the line by protesting against genocide.
Come September and October, my suspicion is that students will continue to protest against genocide and injustice in various quads and offices across the nation.
A lot of news media, for whatever reason, will do their best to cover protests as a “both sides make good points” story.
Trump Trump Trump will do a good job of demagoguing this.
And Biden will find himself on the horns of a dilemma: doing a Sista Soulja kinda maneuver *OR* by explaining that freedom of assembly is covered by the First Amendment and I Thought You People Wanted That Sort Of Thing.
While both have upsides, both also have downsides.
And there will be *PLENTY* of stuff on your television that you’re going to be sick of seeing.
That’s my guess, anyway.Report
Oh, okay, you think Israel will be an electoral problem for Biden? I have serious doubts.
A: I have great doubts that the campus demonstrations will be as fervent and obvious as they were at end of term. Students have self interest and I, cynically, suspect they’ll prioritize those interests over yowling on the quad about Israel-especially as the weather gets colder.
B: I also have great doubts that a lot of votes turn on the purity pro-palestinian axis. For everyone else to the left of the “Let Israel purge the whole territory and bring the Messiah” crowd Bidens’ done about all he can do realistically.Report
I didn’t mention Israel.
I was talking about the protests.
The weather will get colder but… when? Not September. October? Late October?
And it’s not the purity pro-palestinian axis that I’m talking about.
I’m specifically talking about the stuff that you’re going to be sick of seeing on your television.Report
I’m extremely doubtful that we’ll be seeing any significant university protests in the fall. I’m even more doubtful we’ll be seeing so many protests that the media, and it feels odd for me to be doubting the mendacity of mainstream media, will be obsessing about it to the degree that it’ll filter to the low info swing voters who’ll decide this election.
And if they aren’t protesting the Israel issue then what would they be protesting?Report
Fair enough. At the very least, it should be measurable.
I think that stuff like the charges being dropped is an indicator that the consequences for doing so will be minimal… which means that the downside for doing it is lessened.
And if they aren’t protesting the Israel issue then what would they be protesting?
Tibet. Latin America. Donald Trump.
Friggin’ Entropy Itself.Report
Yeah, those things existed before October 2023 and they weren’t widely protested.
Likewise the university admins are sick of it and protesting at the -start- of your academic term is very very different that protesting at the -end- of the same. I suspect these kids will, mostly, find more important things to do. Things related to them securing their own personal success and sinecures- especially now that the university admins are a lot less velvet glovey with them.Report
Well, it’s measurable.
I suspect that there will be protests because protests are fun. Camping on the quad is fun. Telling people “YOU CAN’T WALK THROUGH HERE!” is fun. Protesting injustice is fun. Being righteous is fun.
I think that the administration was hoping for more consequences for the Columbia occupation because then they could say “our hands were tied!”
But now they’ll have to do something instead of relying on the cops and the prosecutors to do something.
And I’m not entirely certain that they have the stones.
But, as I said, we’ll see.
It’s measurable, at least.Report
Yeah what’s not fun is not doing your homework, or failing an exam and losing a prestigious perch at an Ivy because you wanted to virtue signal. It’s not like there aren’t a million slavering elite kidlets just waiting in line for those spots and it isn’t like those students are unaware of it. That is the difference between start of the academic year and end of it.Report
Is that what happened last semester?Report
I recall the foofaraw about the demonstrations reaching a series of peaks around December and again near summer.. as in the periods of time when exams are done, grades are determined and students have a lot of time to fish around. In other words the times when potential negative outcomes to those students prospects are minimized.Report
Pundits have a difficult time understanding anyone outside of the Politico/ NYT axis.
They tell us the Decisive Block of voters are the disengaged low information people who think that inflation is raging and unemployment is high;
Also, the Decisive Block of voters are people who assiduously follow the details of Columbia University protests and can name the university president.Report
(Chip, we were specifically talking about what people would be sick of seeing on their television sets.)Report
OK.
Will they be sick of seeing mobs of dirty hippies trashing university buildings and talking about how much they hate Genocide Joe?
Maybe.Report
If you’d like to participate in any of the DNC 2024 Convention protests, you can sign up here.Report
Israel/Palestine will not be a big issue for Biden:
1.Very few people who vote, vote on foreign policy;
2. A lot of the I/P protestors would look for other reasons not to vote for Biden because they are purity ponies.Report
The polls I have seen show the Israel/Gaza situation as way down the list of priorities. If Biden loses I do not think it will be because of that. Absent some multi news cycle making atrocity in the immediate run up to election day I can’t imagine it being a factor at all, and even then only in the most minor of ways.Report
Pretty much this.Report
This isn’t about Israel/Palestine! It’s about stuff you’ll be sick about seeing on your television and that will include students protesting whatever the hell is hip (and that *MIGHT* include Israel/Palestine).
Where Israel/Gaza might have an impact is when it comes to donations… but it’s only June.Report
“You’ll be sick of this stuff that I personally find objectionable!”Report
No, my point is more like what I already said: “And there will be *PLENTY* of stuff on your television that you’re going to be sick of seeing.”
If you’d like to make the point that you, personally, won’t be sick of seeing passionate students standing up against genocide, that’s great. I believe you.Report
Why should anyone accept your claim that you know what they will be sick of seeing?Report
I don’t know what people will be sick of seeing on their television.
My claim is that I know that there will be *PLENTY* on their televisions to be sick of.Report
There is always lots of stuff on television that lots of people are, or will be, sick of seeing.
In other news, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.Report
I’m not the one who needs that explained to him, CJ.Report
If Chip labors under the delusion that you’re actually saying anything, and insists on responding, there’s nothing I can doReport
The “anything” at the root of my point is that people will, indeed, be sick of Trump Trump Trump by the end of October… but they will also be sick of such things as Student Encampments along with all sorts of other stuff.
Heck, I’ve even included a link to the “MARCH ON THE DNC 2024” webpage.
Perhaps I should have repeated my “there are three groups of voters” point and then people could have explained to me that Trump Voters aren’t going to stop being Trump Voters because of some silly student protests…Report
Look, the point is, by November there will be plenty of things that people will be sick of hearing about, including:
College kids protesting about genocideCollege kids protesting about what is hipSomething happening somewhere by someone, and boy will people be sick of it!Report
Jaybird, you need to remember that some people intentionally seek out and experience stuff that makes them sick because they don’t have any other way to show that they’re Very Concerned About Morality.Report
The more people see of Trump. The more they hate him.Report
I wonder if the afro he’s wearing in that photo is helping him among black voters.Report
Several months ago I watched a movie on (I think) Netflix called They Cloned Tyrone where white guys wearing afro wigs to blend into a black neighborhood is a recurring joke. I won’t vouch for the movie. The attempt at message was cliche and trite, but it had a few funny moments, including where the main characters start to notice the occurrences.Report
“Anyway, my read of what’s going to happen in the election is muddled as heck”
Meh. Repub/Demo. The machinery of the “state” continues on, with few major course corrections. Elections are smoke and mirrors giving the “voter” the idea that his voice counts. YMMVReport
Yesterday, Nate Cohn had Trump and Biden in a statistical dead heat and I think that this is probably accurate. There are a few things going on:
1. Negative Partisanship is at an all time high and I am not sure the media or polls are fully accounting for this. Democrats are catching up but Republicans still generally show much more negativity. They will always say that things are horrible when Democrats are in charge but Democrats will not do such to the same degree yet.
2. Biden and Trump are unpopular. Republicans hate Biden a lot. Democrats hate Trump a lot. A fair number of voters think a pox on both their houses.
3. The relative strength of both parties is roughly equal.
All this means is that the election is again going to turn on squishy swing voters in a handful of states, will be close, and possibly not called for days after election day. Abortion probably helps Biden and the Democrats as does Trump’s felony conviction. Inflation probably helps the Republicans.
My general view is that Israel/Palestine is a non-factor for the overwhelming majority of voters.Report
Though Trump also benefits from the low bigotry of soft expectations. Trump’s expectations for tomorrow is to be 65 percent normal and not make a bowel movement on stage. Biden’s expectation is being Lincoln or FDR or JFK at the height of their rhetorical success.Report
The Times has a poll that has Trump up by 6 with registered voters and up by 3 with likely voters. It knows the poll is an outlier and it received much more Republican responses. Now it is trying to hedge its bets: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/upshot/biden-trump-poll-outlier.html
Outliers are no fun for pollsters, but they’re inevitable. Historically, outliers are less accurate when judged against final election results than polls that hew closer to the average of other polls. But outliers often spark a media frenzy — the distinct findings make them seem more surprising or newsworthy. A Selzer/Bloomberg poll from almost this exact date 12 years ago caused a circus when it was released: It showed Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney by 13 points (he won by less than four).
When outlier results come around, it’s generally better to look at the average of polls. As it happens, we released our poll averages for the cycle on Monday: Mr. Trump is ahead by one point over President Biden after including the latest Times/Siena poll. That’s a safer measure of where the race stands.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean the poll should be tossed out altogether. Sometimes, the outliers are right.Report
There has been some wild polling this year with results that would represent some huge paradigm shifts in American politics:
1. One poll had Millennials and Gen Z shift from D+20 in 2022 to Trump +6 in 2024;
2. The same poll had Boomers do the opposite and go from R+12 to Biden+15 in the same time span;
3. Another poll or perhaps the same one had Trump capture 35-40 percent of the Black vote.
Any of these would be huge paradigm shifts and in my mind extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence but the thing about polling is that it seems to have made itself impervious to critique because anyone who tries to critique the methodology of a poll or the cross-tabs or the veracity of results becomes an “unskewed poll guy who lives in his mom’s basement” or something similar.Report
Aren’t polls supposed to be their own evidence?Report
I agree with most of the above but would add that:
Democrats have generally and consistently outperformed polling since the 2018.
There’s a lot of factors here but the biggest reason is that the bloc of voters who are the sort that vote in EVERY election used to be majority Republican. Today they are majority Democrat.
If you look at the crosstabs, Trump’s strength is with low engagement people who don’t vote frequently. Biden has a HUGE lead among voters who voted in 2020 and a more modest lead among likely voters in most polls.
That’s not the end of the world – after all, in presidential years you can win with lower engagement voters as Obama did quite handily in 2008 and 2012.
Bad news for Trump: those wins, 2012 especially, required a massive, disciplined organized GOTV effort. Which he doesn’t have because he turned the RNC into a vehicle for delivering donor dollars to his lawyers.
What’s more — lots of Republican legislators have spent the past four years passing voting laws that make it HARDER for low engagement voters to vote and also harder to engage in organized GOTV efforts.
Lots of self-owning here – and Trump’s people know it, as evidenced by Trump suddenly changing his tune on early voting and vote by mail. But there’s no indication that they’re doing much planning for organized GOTV at all…Report
As of this morning, Trump is back in the lead on 538 and his lead has jumped to 1.5% on RCP’s polling average.
Well, we all know that polling in June for something that isn’t going to happen until November is meaningless.Report
Each month it wobbled around in this zone is another month closer to it being actually predictive.Report
Its almost like there is a tremendous number of Americans who look at Trump and have decided they rather like him.Report
Never suggested otherwise. The ones who’re actively liking Trump are his base and nothing anyone does is going to sway them.Report
I’m just trying to dispel the myth of the Innocent Trump Voter, who only votes for him reluctantly because of some flaw in Biden, or because of something those crazy kids at Columbia did, or because the price of eggs is too damn high, or whatever other excuse people want to conjure up to avoid dealing with the fact that a terrible percentage of Americans are willing to surrender democracy and the rule of law.Report
Defining every GOP voter as anti-democratic, racist facists is both too pat and also too simplistic. No small number of them simply think Trump will cut their taxes and accomplish little else. Some vote GOP because they always have and think no more about doing so every four years than one does picking up milk every time they go to the grocery store. Some have genuine policy beefs with Dems and the further left that Dems get branded by and vote against them rather than for the GOP. The list goes on and on.Report
It was ever so.
The rise of every noxious evil like Communism or Fascism is made possible by those very same people, who although not themselves members of the party are happy to see it cut taxes/ increase subsidies/ restore this or that/ etc.
What every single Republican voter has in common, without exception, is the prioritizing of some goal over the preservation of democracy and the rule of law.Report
Court appointments and immigration. It’s been a long time since I heard anyone talk about taxes.Report
Of course they don’t talk about taxes. Cutting taxes on the wealthy isn’t popular and hasn’t been popular for quite some time. But that’s still the one north star the GOP can always, always, always be relied on to adhere to. Taxes on the wealthy will always be cut, whatever the year, whatever the situation, whenever the GOP has the power to do it.Report
For clarity: it’s been a long time since I’ve heard primary-voter-type Republicans even talk about taxes. You’d have an easier time getting them to talk about cutting social programs, which likewise isn’t something that Republicans would want to be overheard talking about.Report
Sure, doesn’t change that the GOP reliably does it every time they get an opportunity to do so. There’s no reason to talk about it- it’s unpopular with the voting masses even within the GOP. The GOP politicians don’t market it publicly to their voters for that reason. They just assure their wealthy donors in private meetings that the tax cuts will come- and they always do.
Judges? Judges wobble this way and that. Immigration? I’m not even going to bother laughing at that one it’s so sad how vast the divide is between what the GOP says about immigration and what they do. Talk is cheap, actions speak louder. What the GOP does is cut taxes on the wealthy.Report
I thought we were talking about what motivates GOP voters. Anyway, I guess you conceded my point, although I don’t understand the digression about secret cabals.Report
I don’t know if you and I were disagreeing to begin with. The GOP group who cares about tax cuts communicates their tax cut desires directly & privately and gets their assurances the same way. It’s not some secret; they just don’t trumpet it from the rooftops the way they did during the Bush II era.Report
I’m disagreeing with you in that I don’t think those people exist beyond a small handful. I just don’t hear them and I don’t think they’re worth noting.Report
In absolute numbers I doubt they’re exactly what we’d call a powerful voting block. In terms of ideology, clout and control of what the GOP actually does they’re huge though their grasp is a little weaker now than it was pre-Trump. I can’t think of any other constituency of the GOP that more reliably gets what they want than they.Report
In some ways people who like Trump for what he is, a massive racist and sexist, are understandable. The ones who are frustrating are those who basically are nihilists for one reason or another and want Trump to be a chaos agent that breaks everything.
Also a tremendous number of Americans look at Trump and think no thanks very loudly.Report
I’ll agree that those are two of the several categories that like Trump. There are also folks, like me, who “like” Trump, not for who he is, or his politics, but for the fact that he causes the other side to “loose their shXt.” Note–I didn’t vote for the guy either, but it’s enjoyable listening to NPR 24 hours before the election talk about how Hillary was going to win, only to hear them shocked the next day announcing Trump won, and all that smug attitude was replaced with dismay.
“contemplate this on the tree of woe”Report
Spite is one of the strongest components of reactionism, a dark loathing of one’s fellow citizens and a desire to inflict suffering upon them.Report
It’s not spite-at least from my end.
Spite defined: “a desire to hurt, annoy, or offend someone.”
It’s the demonstration that those in the media, who for years claimed neutrality, were lying. They never were neutral, “we report, you decide” was BS. This was a wonderful example of people who thought “no one could possibly vote for Trump” facing the reality that they were wrong….badly. In some ways, it was never really the reporters/announcers fault. They lived isolated in a bubble of their own making and never experienced the “fly over” land that voted for him.Report
This zone means it is a toss-up.Report
The margin of error is called a margin of error for a reason. The results here basically state that it is very close all around and no one is exactly Mr. Popular.Report
Would you say that we have not, in fact, turned a corner?Report
Margin of error today depends on knowledge (or guesses) about the underlying distribution. We all know that somewhere out there a lead researcher and
minionsgraduate students are fitting a large neural network to the massive data sets for voter registration, fine-grained economics, global ammunition consumption, etc. Probably there’s more than one. They won’t be players this year, but at least one will get lucky with choice of NN structure and data sets and will be doing a bang-up job of forecasting by 2028. No one knows what the distribution behind the NN outputs is. No one is going to have a handle on margin of error.ReportBefore anybody looks at post-debate poll numbers, keep in mind that Romney decisively won the first debate against Obama.Report