Why are Democrats performing better at the Senate level?

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

In 2022 we saw Democratic Senate candidates consistently run well ahead of the generic congressional ballot. Despite the nation shifting 6 points right from 2020, the Democratic Senate candidates won in narrow Biden states.

In 2024, we seem to have Democratic Senate candidates polling well while Biden is getting crushed.

[Pres Mike]

Polls underestimated Democrats in 2022 and they are underestimating President Biden in 2024. A poll released today shows President Biden at 40% in Arizona, Trump at 50%. Come on, does that sound right? Even if Trump wins the state, it won't be by 10 points

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

Polls underestimated Democrats in 2022 and they are underestimating President Biden in 2024. A poll released today shows President Biden at 40% in Arizona, Trump at 50%. Come on, does that sound right? Even if Trump wins the state, it won't be by 10 points

Gallego is up by 3 in the same poll Trump is up by 7.

[SnowLabrador]

Notice that most of the good Senate polls have Democrats well under 50 percent. The undecideds in the Senate races will break Republican.

[xavier110]

Two factors:

1) the youth and non-white voters that Biden is hemorrhaging still support Dems. The same NYT poll that had Biden at 30% (lol) in AZ with 18-29 yos has Gallego clearing 54%. Up to you if that means Biden has more upside or Kari Lake.

2) Some inverse of 2020, where voters chose Biden and hedged their bets with GOP Congress, assuming he’d win. If people start to think Trump is definitely winning this, we will need a check on him. Right, guys? Now excuse me as I stick my head in a blender.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Cause Senate incumbents at this stage have the advantage that voters generally know who their senator is (unlike their house member) and at this stage don’t yet know who their opponent really is . So that creates a pretty big incumbency bump in the polls at this stage .

When it comes to presidential elections both candidates tend to have very high name recognition due to how much free media the election campaign gets and this time this factor is greater than ever due to the election being between two presidents.

When it comes to house elections , both candidates tend to have low name recognition these days so house elections are the closest proxy you can get to voters general partisan preferences. In the old days house incumbents actually used to have good name rec due to local media still being influential and they would generally have command over that . These days local media has little influence so that tool is no longer helpful

[Dan the Roman]

People continue to undervalue Biden's extreme unpopularity by looking at Trump's favorbility ratings. The problem is that Biden's job approval ratings are lower than his personal numbers, where is Trump's retrospective job approval is almost even.

So we are seeing

Favorable

42-54 Biden
39-55 Trump

Job
39-56 Biden
46-49 Trump

With the same samples.

The question is not 2020 double-haters. It is whether voters who dislike both Biden and Trump, but view Biden's presidency as a failure and Trump's as a success vote for him. 

[MR DARK BRANDON]

Races with Long time incumbents typically end up being less polarized than a prez race.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Easy polls are undercut Biden with Latinos and blks and putting them back for Ds at the S level

[Oregon Eagle Politics]

By running coherent and charismatic candidates like Brown, Casey, in contrast to the incoherent, poor communicator Biden.

[DrScholl]

The variance is probably going to negligible in reality. Polling just might die after this cycle if their numbers are far off in November.

[Del Tachi]

The generic Republican running for Congress is less popular than Donald Trump.

[Eraserhead]

Hopefully people want to put some kind of check on Trump when they let him in there again!

[Xing]

Biden is more controversial than most Democratic Senate incumbents, and incumbents normally overperform by at least a bit anyway. I doubt the gap will be quite as large in the end, and I'm guessing that some Democrats who are not happy with Biden will come home for him eventually, but it's yet to be seen if it's enough for him to win.

[Progressive Pessimist]

By running coherent and charismatic candidates like Brown, Casey, in contrast to the incoherent, poor communicator Biden.

Casey is the most uncharismatic Democrat incumbent in Pennsylvania! He has a well-liked brand, and incumbency though, so it doesn't matter. And that basically backs up the notion of Senate Democrats getting a bigger benefit of the doubt than Biden.