Mothra said:
whiterock said:
Mothra said:
whiterock said:
Mothra said:
whiterock said:
Mothra said:
whiterock said:
That's the 3rd or 4th poll I've posted with BOTH candidates in the low-40's. Classic set up for a very low turnout/base election. Tons of undecideds, most of whom will not vote or will vote 3rd party.
If/when Trump is the nominee, it will turn out the vote.
Wait and see.
Maybe. Maybe not.
https://www.newsmax.com/mclaughlin/biden-fulton-trump/2023/08/29/id/1132479/
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This is a sham poll. Among other things, it has Trump almost even among Blacks and dominating young voters. No other polls have had anything close to that.
Outlier for sure. Posted mostly because neither 538 nor CBS has ever been Trump friendly. And some here see 538 in particular as reputable. And I think they beat the RCP average in the midterms, IIRC. So we can't ash-can it. It has to sit on the table to review and force questions about what is going on.
I was not a fan of 538 in the early years, but now it is primarily a poll aggregator.
Unrelated to 538, 3 polls out showing Biden up on Trump 3-6 points. Two new Biden approval polls, 47 and 43. And generic ballot Dem 45 GOP 42. No bueno.
I think at this point we could find a poll to please anyone. All over the map......
Show me 2 actual pollsters that have Trump's approvals higher than Biden and I'll at least partially agree . . . .
There are several that not only have him ahead in support, but winning independents by a margin greater than the overall margin.
I'm not contesting that "approvals" matter, just noting that "approval rate" is not synonymous with "who do you intend to vote for." That is particularly true given the "margin of error" separation between the two guys in almost every poll, regardless of who's on top or bottom.
We will indeed have people making the eminently rational choice to vote for Trump despite thinking Biden is a nicer guy.
While I don't disagree with this, you must surely realize that the same holds true for Biden. While there are a lot of Democrats and independents who don't approve of Biden, because they hate Trump with the passion of a thousand burning suns, they will make the choice to vote for Biden, despite thinking he's done a pretty crappy job as president.
When our only hope for getting our unlikable candidate elected is that the other candidate will be less likable, we are in pretty serious trouble.
Ever heard the saying, "Opinions are like a--holes. Everyone has one"?
Substitute polls for opinions, and it has essentially the same meaning.
For sure that could apply to every post on this forum.
The data is the data. It's can't really be dispositive when the numbers are so close, and in any event we can't read too much into it this far out in front of the election. But, and this is important......the data does not decisively support the arguments of the "can't win" caucus. It actually fits better the argument I've been making = the race is at this point competitive. We will have a better idea 9 months from now when we know exactly who will be the candidates and a better feel for what will be the 2-3 issues that will be most important to voters. Who knows, Biden may be gone and Harris may be President. Or Newsom may be on a coronation tour. If so, Kennedy may catch a 2nd wind.
Dems have a real dilemma on their hands if Biden doesn't make the ticket, for whatever reason. Harris is almost by acclamation the weakest of the visible options, yet they cannot skip over her without tearing a hole in their bucket. So it's not like they're supermen over on the other side. They can and do make mistakes, fail to fix their own problems.
As I've been saying, supporters of candidates other than Trump have got to find a better argument than electability. It's clearly not working. And it won't unless he's campaigning from jail. (which is the least likely of all options).
I think the last sentence of your post is far more likely than you're willing to admit, especially in GA and in the documents case.
You keep focusing on electability being a poor argument, while continuing to proffer an equally poor argument - banking on Biden being even less popular than Trump. When you run a very poor and disliked candidate and hope that his opponent will be even less likeable and unpopular, that is typically a recipe for disaster in an election. The fact is Trump has gotten even less popular than he was in 2019/2020, and Biden's approval numbers, while not great, are still better than Trump's (holding steady around 41% compared to Trump's 39%) - this despite Biden being a geriatric patient whose administration has been a total disaster. If Biden were to step down, and it becomes Newsom vs. Trump (the most likely of alternative scenarios, IMO), then Trump gets beaten in a landslide, IMO.
We already have 2020 as proof that Trump has an electability issue. The idea that his changes are improved in 2024 is simply not borne out by the evidence. We shouldn't ignore past mistakes in our analysis.
LOL that part in italics. Pointing out that BOTH candidates have electability issues is not adopting the electability argument. It's merely noting the fact there is no clear advantage on the question of electablity = 99% of public polling shows neither candidate ahead by a margin greater than the margin of error.
Holding assessments in reserve to determine future trends is not self-serving analysis. It is wise analysis. Biden is in office. He cannot just go to basement and let staffers critique the incumbent. HE is the incumbent. He will be held accountable to some degree for the good/bad that happens over the next 18 months. And it is hardly unreasonable to look at the landscape and assess that the odds of developments working against him are greater than the odds of developments working in his favor. 2020 was a referendum on Trump; 2024 will likely be a referendum on Biden. And Biden is an incredibly weak incumbent.
Admittedly, it will be an ugly contest.
Sure, I'd rather not have an ugly contest.
But we can't fret about what we'd like.
We have to figure out a way to win the contest we're gonna get.
And we can.
LOL at your denial. Come on, whiterock. You have been attacking the electability of Trump argument since the get go, while continually advocating Biden's approval and popularity decreasing.
Again, if job approval is any barometer (and it is), Biden has remained steady around 41% and Trump around 39% for more than a year. So, Trump is still coming up short in that area. And you also seem to want to discount that this is essentially a race between two incumbents. America has already rejected Trump once. So his track record in that area isn't good.
It's highly unlikely at this point Trump is going to increase in popularity, so the only hope is that Biden decreases. What remains true of both candidates, however, is that many of those who disapprove of the candidate will still vote for them over the alternative.
Is there a slim hope Trump can do something he's been unable to do since 2016? Sure. But there's not much hope based on the evidence.
I've attacked the electability argument because it has obvious flaws. That nearly 2/3rds of GOP voters don't buy it tends to ratify the assessment to that end I offered after the mid-terms. They didn't/don't buy it party because the polling at best hints at it, and mostly because they know it's not a static issue - that Biden is indeed likely to be weaker as time goes on, for a number of well-discussed reasons.
Popularity is an important issue, but it's not dispositive. People do vote for people they don't like.......because they don't like the other guy either, or like him a lot less. And to that end, the very likeability argument one could make against Trump applies also to Biden. Again, your entire case here is implicitly static.....that only Trump's likeability matters, that Biden's could not deteriorate below Trump's, etc.... My assessment would be different if Trump was running against someone beloved. But he's not. (at least yet).
We have a closely divided election. Not terribly many people are going to have to change their minds to win in 2024. Six digits or less, across a small handful of states. What Biden is doing to Trump in court could end up hurting Biden's likeability more than Trump's. There's evidence of it now. And Trump is not going to let that issue glide. See Oso's link above. Trump is going to pick up the turd and shove it in Biden's nose. So far, it's playing well.
Part of your problem is your polling numbers. I haven't seen the kind of stasis you noted. They've fluctuated a bit. (Biden support is at an all-time low at Rasmussen after being right at 50 only a few weeks ago.) But regardless.....a 2-point difference in likeability in a polling universe that has a 3-point margin of error and......well, that's like trying to hang my Cape Buffalo mount on a 16-penny nail. Not well supported. We do have some good candidates, though. I'll be a happy warrior for all of them except Hutchinson and Christie. I'll hold my nose and vote for those two as well, but I won't like it, just like I didn't like it when I had to vote for Romney. People do vote for people they don't like, from time to time, ya know.
