This election cycle is shaping up to be a strange one, with a striking dichotomy hanging over it. On one hand, Republicans have lost or under-performed in every national election since 2016. Just this week, Democrats comfortably won back a swing suburban district in Long Island, New York -- which Biden had carried in 2020, but Republicans swung by double digits and won two years later. As we've seen in recent years, high-propensity voters have gravitated toward Team Blue, resulting in a distinct Democratic advantage in lower turnout off-year and special election contests. Democrats are also taking full advantage of early and mail-in balloting, building huge and often insurmountable leads prior to election day (while Republicans remain highly skeptical of these successful vote-banking practices, partially thanks to Donald Trump's influence). They're also consistently outspending the GOP. This was also the case in a local battle over a state legislative seat outside of Philadelphia, with Pennsylvania's lower house majority at stake. Democrats massively over-performed, winning the seat in a total blowout.
These are not the sorts of breadcrumbs that augur well for a strong November for Republicans who are still smarting from a distinctly and historically underwhelming midterm cycle, in which an expected 'red wave' never materialized. Neither is the drumbeat of House retirements. On the other hand, not only is Joe Biden in very serious trouble on overall approval, individual issues, and perceptions of his fitness for the job -- all of which were factors in 2022 that didn't seem to hurt the Democrats very much -- he also continues to trail Donald Trump head-to-head. The 45th president narrowly leads his successor in the national polling average, and he continues to post advantages in a string of key states. A few new additions to the list:
2024 Michigan GE:
— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) February 15, 2024
Trump 47% (+2)
Biden 45%
.
Trump 42% (+5)
Biden 37%
Kennedy 11%
Stein 3%
West 2%
.@foxnewspoll, 1,106 RV, 2/8-12https://t.co/PlcslJ520J pic.twitter.com/wR4a1rNhtx
Trump by two, with a growing lead when other candidates are included. No wonder Bidenworld is concerned enough to be actively wooing open terrorist sympathizers in Michigan. The Biden campaign has also been looking to flip North Carolina. How's that looking so far?
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📊 NORTH CAROLINA GE: Fox News Poll
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) February 14, 2024
Trump 50% (+5)
Biden 45%
.
Trump 46% (+9)
Biden 37%
RFK Jr 8%
Stein 2%
West 1%
—
Haley 46% (+5)
Biden 41%
.
Biden 33% (+2)
Haley 31%
RFK Jr 19%
West 2%
Stein 2%
—
538 rank: #16 (2.8/3.0) | 1,090 RV | 2/8-12https://t.co/VOqjrmBznk pic.twitter.com/lE1h2pdIkN
Add these data sets to Fox's recent numbers out of Georgia (Trump +8) and Wisconsin (exact tie), and Trump looks pretty well-positioned at the moment. (Nikki Haley's camp would point out that she's positioned far better, according to a raft of polling, but she does not appear to have a path to the nomination). How well positioned? Here's the founder of Real Clear Politics running the current electoral math:
As of right now, this translates to 293 electoral votes for Trump, 245 for Biden.....https://t.co/6PDZ6cW7kR pic.twitter.com/zww43jPvZE
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) February 15, 2024
Playing around with the '270 to win' widget, 293 looks like Trump's hypothetical high-water mark. There are also plausible scenarios with Trump winning in the 270's range, as well as a conceivable 269-269 electoral college tie, depending on how a few swing districts in Maine and Nebraska might go. There are also plenty of paths for another Biden win, obviously, as Trump would need to win over a number of states he lost four years ago. Of course, if Republicans again under-perform, all the polling won't matter. Relying on lower-propensity voters to show up in force, counter-acting Team Blue's high-propensity Trump era coalition, is risky business:
A populist party that abandons college educated voters (really, suburban voters) so it can appeal to a shrinking demographic with watered-down leftist economic ideas and hairbrained conspiracy theories is going to lose many elections. https://t.co/ko9Y1Zerib
— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) February 14, 2024
Republicans are looking at the results in PA, OK, and NY and are saying what's going on. Why are we performing so badly? We lost high propensity (mostly college educated white voters). We gained lots of low propensity voters who don't show up. And the weirdness around conservative culture (T-Swift is a CIA plant, election was stolen, arrest women for having abortions) is only making these people run away more. It's hurting up and down the ballot almost everywhere we go. And the fact that low propensity voters won't vote early because they believe in nonsensical conspiracies about voting machines means we can't make up for it with election day turnout. It's happening everywhere and could happen in November. People need to be aware.
Yeah, the 'bad, old, loser pre-Trump' Republican Party was pretty good at winning a lot of elections, even if they lost consecutive presidential elections to a talented Barack Obama:
The really weird part is that Rs convinced themselves they needed a totally new voting base after they won a 234-seat House majority, a 54-seat Senate majority, 68 of 99 state legislative chambers, and had 33 governors, 25 of whom presided over GOP-led trifectas.
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) February 14, 2024
Food for thought. Democrats, meanwhile, will be white-knuckling Biden's public appearances and utterances, concerned that a major lapse or stumble could be devastating. Suboptimal. Biden is very, very vulnerable. They all know it. Jon Stewart is warning them. But they don't feel like they have other viable options, so the anxiety-wracked march forward continues. On the other side, Republicans still have to worry about this (setting aside the trolling, this graphic is useful about what might be coming down the pike, though it's unclear how many of the criminal trials will get going before the election, if any:
This lineup is stacked 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Fndv2KEiZ3
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 13, 2024
Buckle up.
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