Sarah posted earlier about the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, which is sending another round of shockwaves through Democratic circles. Seeing Trump unambiguously leading Biden by a modest but serious margin -- especially in a survey conducted by their vaunted "paper of record" -- has set off alarm bells and reactions ranging from fear to rage. The data set shows Trump ahead by five points head-to-head, 48 to 43 percent, which aligns with an array of national and state-level polling that we've been covering for months. And while it's mostly folly to read too deeply into the internal cross tabs of a single poll taken eight months before voting begins, some of these margins are striking:
(NY Times/Siena poll) do you plan on voting for Biden/Trump?
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) March 2, 2024
Overall: 43/48
Men: 40/49
Women: 46/46
18-29 yr olds: 53/41
White: 40/53
Black: 66/23
Hispanic: 40/46
Other: 43/45
White w/ college: 55/40
White w/o: 29/62
Midwest: 39/55
Suburb: 46/44
Biden 2020: 83/10 pic.twitter.com/1BzoZbGnfo
It's not surprising to see Trump up handily among male voters. It is surprising to see him tied among women. In this survey, the 45th president is leading Hispanics outright, and is pulling a vote share among black voters that would be absolutely fatal to the Democratic coalition, if it's even in the ballpark of accuracy. But it's that final number that is most significant to me. If Biden loses anywhere close to 10 percent of his 2020 voters to Trump this fall, with others falling off to third party alternatives or apathy, that would be lethal to his chances -- especially with Trump retaining nearly all (97 percent) of his 2020 supporters in this survey. Biden narrowly won a handful of states that put him over the top in the electoral college last time. His margin of error in pulling a repeat is slim. Red flags everywhere:
Only one in four voters thinks the country is moving in the right direction. More than twice as many voters believe Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them as believe his policies have helped them. A majority of voters think the economy is in poor condition. And the share of voters who strongly disapprove of Mr. Biden’s handling of his job has reached 47 percent, higher than in Times/Siena polls at any point in his presidency...Mr. Trump’s ability to consolidate the Republican base better than Mr. Biden has unified the base of his own party shows up starkly in the current thinking of 2020 voters. Mr. Trump is winning 97 percent of those who say they voted for him four years ago, and virtually none of his past supporters said they are casting a ballot for Mr. Biden. In contrast, Mr. Biden is winning only 83 percent of his 2020 voters, with 10 percent saying they now back Mr. Trump.
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And then there are these findings:
A majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College. The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president. A sizable share was even more worried: Nineteen percent of those who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, and 13 percent of those who said they would back him in November, said the 81-year-old president’s age was such a problem that he was no longer capable of handling the job. The misgivings about Mr. Biden’s age cut across generations, gender, race and education, underscoring the president’s failure to dispel both concerns within his own party and Republican attacks painting him as senile. Seventy-three percent of all registered voters said he was too old to be effective, and 45 percent expressed a belief that he could not do the job...Voters have not expressed the same anxieties about Donald J. Trump, who at 77 is just four years Mr. Biden’s junior. Their likely rematch would make them the oldest presidential nominees in history.
Illustrating just how broken the journalist class in America has become -- as we've seen demonstrated in multiple ways over the past week or so alone -- is this fuming tantrum by a journalism professor excoriating the Times for commissioning and simply reporting on the results of a poll that's bad for the Tribe. Content warning for language in this embarrassing, impotent conniption fit from a self-appointed journalism "expert:"
The fucking Times. It follows up yesterday's awful poll with another. That they even asked this question is evidence of the bias--the agenda--in their poll. Who made age an "issue"? The credulous Times falling into the right-wing's projection. This is not journalism. Shameful. pic.twitter.com/lVlBGrP1Sy
— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) March 3, 2024
Apparently, it's a crime against the profession to report news that might upset the Good People and encourage the Bad People. It's also pure, partisan fantasy that it's somehow the 'news' media that has invented and perpetuated the storyline about Biden's age. Lefties angrily engaging in this insistence are deluding themselves about what the American people see on a regular basis from Joe Biden. If anything, the press has tried to downplay and cover up that challenge for quite awhile, with a recent story quoting members of the White House press corps admitting that their private conversations about Biden's fitness and acuity were generally not reflected in their coverage of the president for a long time. We also know that the White House has been aggressively working the refs on this front, erupting in fury when unhelpful realities are covered. But it's not just Biden's age and related concerns that are deeply imperiling his second term. His approval ratings on core issues are also dreadful:
NEW FOX News Poll: President Biden’s Job Performance on key issues. #FoxNewsSundayhttps://t.co/F1zBTEOMMQ pic.twitter.com/PabVJHwKyH
— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) March 3, 2024
That's a fresh Fox poll that shows Biden's personal favorability cratering (-22 point swing) compared to four years ago, and Trump now leading the incumbent by two points nationally. That's the same margin as a just-published Wall Street Journal poll, which measures the race at Trump 47 percent, Biden 45 percent. CBS News finds Trump ahead by four percentage points over Biden, a lead fueled by a clear advantage among independent voters:
🇺🇲 2024 National GE: CBS News Poll
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) March 3, 2024
🟥 Trump 52% (+4)
🟦 Biden 48%
Independents
🟥 Trump 57% (+15)
🟦 Biden 42%
YouGov: #4 (2.9/3.0) | 1,436 LV | 2/28-3/1https://t.co/khgQwvhurB pic.twitter.com/Eh5YR6Z9qT
It's worth noting that Nikki Haley continues to post better margins against Biden than Trump, in both national polls and the battleground state numbers. As I keep repeating, none of this is necessarily predictive of what will happen in November, but given voters' universal familiarity with these two men, the numbers can't be totally dismissed as too premature. Yes, a lot can change, and maybe the polling and results will look strikingly different than the snapshots we are seeing now. Things could turn south for Trump, especially if he gets convicted of one or more felonies. Economic improvements might start to break through. On the flip side, Biden could also suffer personal or political setbacks that put his chances even further in jeopardy. What's indisputable at this moment is that Trump has literally never polled better over the last decade or so, and if the election were being held soon, the data suggests that he'd be the favorite to win it. I'll leave you with this:
KJP: Biden didn’t take a cognitive test as part of his physical because he “doesn’t need one.”
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) February 28, 2024
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