YouGov: Biden +12 over Trump

[pbrower2a]

I'm assuming h2h polls with Trump aren't very useful

1. This early, any head-to-head polls fail to predict how the economy, the foreign scene, and the level of domestic tranquility will be. At this stage in the Presidencies of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, both seemed to have smooth sailing to re-election.

2. As the 2020 election shows, Biden will need an outright majority with which to get elected. Democrats run up huge margins in states that leave no mystery about how they will go -- CA, NY, MA, MD, IL, NJ, WA, NM, and CO -- while a Republican can win by working margins in swing states. Biden is still short of a full majority, and he will need at least 51% to defeat the Republican.

3. We do not know what the match-up will be.

This said...

1. 36% support for a former President is historically low. Donald Trump is a known quantity, and 36% support at this stage from someone well-known is putrid. We have seen few polls about an electoral assessment of Donald Trump since January 6, and this is the first that I recall of a Biden-Trump rematch since the election.

2. In my experience the undecided swing ineffectively to the eventual loser. That is 16%, and even if Trump gets 11% of the 16% he loses. That would be a 51-47 edge for Joe Biden, which he would need for winning three of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida.    Getting 68% of a vote outstanding is possible if one is looking at votes coming in from the largest city in any one of those states. We know why. With undecided voters not identifiable by partisan identity, getting 68% is almost always a pipe dream.

3. Giver me these numbers in 2024 and Biden wins. Like an incumbent, Trump will be running on his record -- or running away from it. If a pol runs away from one's record, then the record will chase him down like an angry dog, catch up with him, and overpower and maul him. If he runs on his record... well, President Biden already has some positive achievements. I do not expect him to kick over any hornet's nest.

4. Incumbents usually shape the political debate. An example was that Donald Trump and the GOP successfully offered campaign pitches that claimed that Joe Biden would be soft on socialist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela (those probably won Florida) and a campaign ad that threatened economic failure if Americans voted their conscience and their values instead of voting for Donald Trump and his economic agenda (which played in Michigan, as I know... and I am guessing elsewhere). You may hate Donald Trump and the GOP, those ads said, but if you know what is best for you you will vote Republicans.       

[pbrower2a]

At this stage nobody can reliably predict who is a likely voter.

[pbrower2a]

At this stage nobody can reliably predict who is a likely voter.

I think it's more related to these big public pollsters being incompetent and out of touch. I don't believe for a second that Ann Selzer, brilliant as she is, is the only person in the whole country capable of managing a professional polling company.  

Unless they have blatant bias, pollsters usually get the approval and disapproval numbers right. Sometimes the pollster can be right and people wrong.  Outliers happen, and anything shocking (no, Trump can't be ahead by 8 in Iowa; that must be an outlier because it's Iowa!) can be outliers. They can also reflect big shifts in an election.  Selzer got Iowa twice as Democrats collapsed late there.

The trick is often to predict who will vote. Such scares as "The Democrats are going to take away your guns" or "Republicans want to take away your Social Security" appear on occasion, and they can work. The GOP exploited the Castro bogey in Florida in 2020 to express the stale, if at times effective contention, that anyone who does not endorse the most reactionary economics is a dupe of the Communists and might want to bring a Castro-style government to America on the whole and Florida in particular.

Presidential Elections involving elected incumbents are usually close to the prior result. Exceptions in the last century are 1932, 1972, 1980, and 1992. 1932 and 1980 involved the reality or perception of Presidential failure. 1972 was a binary election following a three-way election, and 1992 was a three-way election following a two-way election. Anyone who expects more than six states to move between 2020 and 2024 makes assumptions that nobody safely makes now, especially that the ideological polarization that has so marked (and marred) American politics for the last fifteen or so years will abate. States decided by 3% or less in 2020 were Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. 4%? Add Florida. Anyone claiming  that any one of these states is certain to go one way or the other at this point is nuts. We can all see scenarios in which any one of those states changes hands. One can discuss trends and demographics, but every one of these eight states is a potential pick-up. They won't all flip.... but anyone who now predicts with certainty which ones is a fool. At 6%, Texas flips.

Patterns that have remained for a long time (we have had only one election diverging much from  50-50 since 1996, and that involves an economic meltdown) must be assumed to be the norm. Yes, demographic change is a reality in elections.

Trump won in 2016 and lost in 2020. That looks like a huge change in electoral behavior -- but a 0.7% even shift in the popular vote gives Trump Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, and we have a fourth consecutive two-term Presidency. Five states and one Congressional district changed hands, and all in one direction.

Unless really-weird things happen between now and 2024, only six states have any reasonable chance to swing to the Republican nominee. 8% swings are possible, but at this point it takes much double-talk* to say that the Democrat has a chance of picking up Iowa or Ohio (well, maybe the states revert to their patterns under Obama) or Texas (demographic change!)... or that the Republican has a chance of picking up Minnesota or New Hampshire (but they were close in 2016!)

*This calls attention to the "double-talk drives" that the science-fiction author Robert Heinlein criticized for allowing space travelers to move around in space at extreme speeds (faster than light) or travel at comfortable rates due to relativistic effects without stationary people Back Home not aging rapidly in contrast to the space travelers. The space travelers might return none the worse for wear, but they find themselves meeting their great-great grandchildren as very old people.