Well, look at this. According to New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College surveys, the Democrats are ahead in most of the key 2024 Senate races even as Biden is being slaughtered in the swing states and is on course to lose his reelection bid. And the disparate results come from the same states. Trump is ahead in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania, and he is one point behind in Wisconsin. The Democratic Senate candidates are ahead in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. There are no Senate races in Georgia or Michigan in this cycle.
Amazingly, the accompanying analysis argues that Trump’s coattails may not be sufficient to carry the Republicans to a Senate majority, when one would expect to hear the opposite argument–that a man who is currently on trial for 34 felonies, and is facing three other felony trials, in addition to recently being found liable for sexual assault and defamation and having his company convicted of fraud, is a drag on his party’s Senate candidates.
This is why we’re seeing commentators like CNN’s Fareed Zakaria arguing that Biden is very unlikely to win in November. I don’t want to believe it, but I am not going to stick my head in the sand either. Nate Cohn says the problem is that young and non-white voters are still behaving like Democrats downticket, but they have turned on Biden:
What’s more surprising is the U.S. Senate results. This is the first time we’ve asked about Senate races this year, and the Democratic candidates led in all four of the states we tested: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.
Not only do Democrats lead, but they also seem to do so in an entirely customary way, with ordinary levels of support from young and nonwhite voters, even as Mr. Biden struggles at the top of the ticket.
Take a look at Nevada:
Nevada was ground zero for this striking ticket splitting. Mr. Trump led the poll by a staggering 12 points among registered voters, thanks to an eye-popping nine-point lead among Hispanic voters and a 13-point lead among those 18 to 29.
But in the Senate race, everything looks “normal.” The Democratic senator Jacky Rosen led her likeliest Republican challenger by two points among registered voters, including a 46-27 lead among those 18 to 29 and a 46-28 lead among Hispanics.
Remarkably, 28 percent of Mr. Trump’s Hispanic supporters and 26 percent of his young supporters back Ms. Rosen.
The Nevada results seem like an outlier even among these other bad results for Biden, but I think it’s reasonable to feel some degree of panic here.
I went back and looked at the 2012 polling, since it seems the most analogous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_2012_United_States_presidential_election
It’s very noisy, especially this far out.
That democrats might hold onto to the senate and lose the presidency is bizarre. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. But it’s bizarre.
Upon some reflection, I have a hard time seeing the situation in which Tammy Baldwin wins reelection but Biden doesn’t take Wisconsin. This would be extraordinary. It’s not impossible though.
Polls are absolutely useless.
I know that doesn’t answer your question, but it’s true. They are useless. They mean absolutely nothing. Especially 6 months out.
Isn’t one of the lessons since 2008 about polling that nobody should overreact to one poll? That even the best pollsters (and NYT/Siena is very good) will have an individual poll that is off target/outside the margin of error?
That said, I think it was here that I learned that there’s 2-3(?) percent of voters who are “vote the bums out” voters. They voted for Obama in ’08, Romney in ’12, Trump in ’16, Biden in ’20 and they’ll vote for Trump in ’24. That means, in addition to the electoral college disadvantage Dems currently have, Biden has to make up another 2-3% from somewhere.
There’s 6 months to go, Biden/Dems have a good record to run on. Dems are more motivated and in larger #s (see: fundraising #s, especially small donors). Biden has a far superior ground game—which means nothing if it’s a blowout one way or the other, but can be decisive in close races. Trump’s legal troubles continue to hurt him and the GOP. *If* he’s convicted, even more so. Biden is not (and, going back to ’88, never has been) a charismatic candidate, but he is (as the SOTU demonstrated) in far better shape that Trump.
All we can do is play the hand we’re dealt. It’s a decent hand. Now let’s try to win it.
Most of the polls are predicting incorrectly. Example from yesterday (5/14/24) is Trone vs. Alsobrooks yesterday in your neck of the woods. Poll from yesterday predicted Trone win by +2.4 points
Trone lost by 10 points!