The commentariat has made much of recent surveys showing Trump ahead of Biden in swing states that probably will decide the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. A Bloomberg/MorningConsult poll released Friday, for example, shows Trump with modest leads among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Emerson also released a survey on Friday indicating that Trump enjoys leads in the same states. The one that created the most buzz was a New York Times/Siena poll showing Trump ahead by even larger margins in Arizona (+5), Georgia (+6), Michigan (+5), Nevada (+10), and Pennsylvania (+4).
It’s difficult to model the electoral effect of the lawfare campaigns being waged against Donald Trump or the influence peddling (i.e. bribery) schemes of Joe Biden and his relatives.
This poll led to a lot of handwringing among Democrats, and more than a few calls for Biden to abandon his reelection campaign. Former Obama advisor David Axelrod, for example, suggested on X (formerly Twitter) that Biden may want to reconsider running again: “If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s.” Before Republicans break out the champagne, however, they would be wise to look below the top-line numbers. As Kim Strassel notes during the Wall Street Journal’s Potomac Watch podcast, the survey says much more about voter aversion to Biden than affection for Trump:
This is a poll that says that he is less hated than Joe Biden at the moment. And they did a number of simulations in this about, well, what if it was a different Democrat running against Donald Trump this year? Believe it or not, Kamala Harris actually did better than Joe Biden in this poll in a head-to-head matchup against Donald Trump. But here’s the number I think David Axelrod was looking at as I was. They had a generic Democrat run against Donald Trump and he beat Donald Trump by eight points. And that tells you everything and it tells you why Democrats are still so keen for Donald Trump to get this nomination.
The poll’s crosstabs also suggest that the weaponization of the Justice Department against Trump may well succeed in the end, despite the increase in support it has generated for him among Republican primary voters. The respondents were asked how it would affect their vote if Trump is convicted of any of the charges for which he will go on trial in March pursuant to his actions Jan. 6, 2021. Their answers were ominous from the GOP perspective. The number of respondents who said a Trump conviction would cause them to change their votes would easily erase the swing state leads listed in the first paragraph. Considering the jurisdiction in which his trial will take place, at least one conviction is all but inevitable. (READ MORE from David Catron: Will Colorado Ban Trump From 2024 Ballot?)
This brings us to President Biden’s response to these polls. He stopped on the south lawn of the White House last Thursday to take questions from the media about the strike he ordered on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and was predictably asked why he thought he was trailing Trump in so many swing state polls. The answer was classic Biden balderdash: “Because you don’t read the polls. Ten polls. Eight of them, I’m beating him in those places. Eight of them. You guys only do two. CNN and New York Times. Check it out. Check it out. We’ll get you a copy of all those other polls.” This echoed a memo first sent to The Hill by Michael Tyler, the Communications Director of Biden-Harris 2024, two days earlier:
Despite the “hair-on-fire,” “sky-is-falling” tone we’ve seen from media coverage over the last few days, political predictions more than a year out tend to look a little different a year later. Gallup predicted an eight-point loss for President Obama only for him to win handedly a year later. A year out from the 2022 midterms, every major outlet similarly predicted a grim forecast for President Biden … the New York Times/Siena College poll has gotten non-stop attention to the exclusion of nearly every other poll … There have been eight polls in the past three weeks showing President Biden leading or tied with Donald Trump.
Much of this is fiction, of course. Yet, unusually for the Biden-Harris campaign, Tyler did get it right on the value of polls conducted a year before an important election. Indeed, as we saw in 2016, they are often wildly off the mark even when conducted a week before an election. Moreover, any poll involving Trump should be regarded with skepticism. Since 2016, he has consistently confounded pollsters whose accuracy can normally be taken for granted. It will be no different in 2024. In fact, when he finally decides he’s had enough of national politics, it’s probable that the pollsters will be happier to see him go than will the Democrats. Few things are harder to predict than Donald Trump and his supporters.
As to the accuracy of the Bloomberg/MorningConsult, Emerson and Times/Siena polls, you can probably flip a coin this morning and produce a 2024 prediction that comes as close to the actual outcome as they can manage. It’s difficult to model the electoral effect of the lawfare campaigns being waged against Donald Trump or the influence peddling (i.e. bribery) schemes of Joe Biden and his relatives. Ignore the polls. Just get out and vote.
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