ABC/Wapo: Trump +3

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Ah, the "no shift from 2022" scenario.

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Ah, the "no shift from 2022" scenario.

LoL it's 2 yrs to Edays

Oh, absolutely fair point, but while I think this poll is probably skewed towards Trump it's not ridiculous to say this is the current state of play.

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Waves happen at end of Eday cycles and Trump is under 3 investigations he's not winning by 3 over Biden

ABC wrongly had RS ahead of the GCB

ABC had a final generic ballot of R+2 in 2022, so basically correct. The real number was R+3; adjusting for a greater number of races not being contested by Democrats, it might've been something like R+1. In previous cycles ABC was horrifically skewed towards Democrats, particularly in 2020.

Give us swing state polling, national numbers are useless.

The GOP won the popular vote by 3 in the midterms but lost all swing states.

Apart from Senate races (a big 'apart' to be sure) they won the non-Northeastern swing states; the GCB numbers are usually cited from House races. PA might be attributable to a mixture of unopposed Republicans and Brian Fitzpatrick specifically running far ahead of a normal Republican -- that particular 'victory' is hard to give full credit for -- but the GOP won AZ/GA/WI quite comfortably at this level.

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Apart from Senate races (a big 'apart' to be sure) they won the non-Northeastern swing states; the GCB numbers are usually cited from House races. PA might be attributable to a mixture of unopposed Republicans and Brian Fitzpatrick specifically running far ahead of a normal Republican -- that particular 'victory' is hard to give full credit for -- but the GOP won AZ/GA/WI quite comfortably at this level.

Not just a big "apart," but a MASSIVE "apart." Senate races were the only federal statewide races held in these states, and thus by far the most similar to and predictive of presidential races in the same states. And Democrats did better in Arizona and Georgia than they have in decades in those races, better than 2020 in Pennsylvania, outperformed expectations in Nevada, etc. Wisconsin was maybe the lone bright spot for the GOP if you just look at the Senate; even then, the gubernatorial race was a major flop for them, though granted that's not federal.

Overall, however, you seem to be desperately cherrypicking data that favors your side in a strained effort to pretend that last year was anything other than a complete and total embarrassing failure for you, or that similar results next year would not result in the GOP going down in flames. There is no path to victory with TRUMP as the nominee in states like PA, AZ, and GA, which clearly showed last year that Trump-endorsed crazy candidates can't win there anymore.

You're also completely ignoring Michigan LOL. Guess you're not counting it as a swing state anymore? Rightfully so perhaps! Because the state AND House results there were utterly pathetic for the GOP. A state that was won by your party not all that long ago shouldn't be written off already. If it is, you're in big trouble.

Senate races are not the only federal races held in those states, actually; there were also House races. Also, in many of these states the statewide down-ballot elections seemed to be fought on pretty normal Republican vs. Democratic lines; while a few places like KS or NY had really skewed turnout environments, this isn’t true for most places. (MI, in fact, did not have a Senate race and was not commonly cited as a swing state in 2016 or 2020, though it was close both times. If you want to count 50/48 there for federal Democrats while statewide Democrats won landslides as a huge win, you can do that.)

House elections are the only ones held in all states, plus “total House vote” is a commonly polled number; citing literally anything else is cherry-picking. Sometimes cherry-picking can be valuable; I think it would be silly not to notice that Democrats tended to win hotly contested races in 2022 (the close Senate races, but also basically all the most expensive House races, actually), and a picture of the year without mentioning that is badly flawed. At the same time, Democrats literally got fewer votes and lost the House; that is what it means to lose a national election. (Sometimes there are complications where one side gets more votes but still loses overall, as in 2012/2016. That didn’t happen this time). Ignoring this and doubling down on 2022 will lead to further national defeats.

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This is actually very similar to the midterm generic ballot, but we do not know how this translates to swing states. Rs won the generic ballot by 2.8 in the midterms (1.6 once adjusting for uncontested races), but lost MI, and would've probably lost PA too without Fitzpatrick and Doyle's overperformances.

They would also only win AZ/WI by 2 and NV by about 3 (NV is probably also skewed by Amodei's overperformance, probably goes to <1 without). This would be quite precarious as if this were an electoral college map they were only 1 of AZ/WI from losing even with a 3 point popular vote lead.

PA would've been lost without the overperformances, and NV/WI would've been skin of their teeth -- like a point in each state -- but AZ and GA would've both been surprisingly comfortable, like 6-7 points each for 'generic' candidates that weren't involved in weird scandals.

So NV doesn't matter, then, because WI is enough to give either side a win. Would be kind of anti-climactic if 2024 is the third straight election in a row decided by WI, since that was the case in both 2016/2020. Though my guess is that if Trump is actually nominated trends in the Sun Belt would be unfavorable and either AZ or GA is likelier to be the decisive state, with WI as a right-of-tipping-point sine qua non.