Tipsheet

Latest NYT Poll Is Causing Democrats to Panic

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  November 06, 2023 10:15 AM

Yes, caveats abound.  Let's run through half a dozen of them:  (1) We're a year out from the election.  (2) Voters' attitudes may shift dramatically in the ensuing months, especially if the economy makes a significant bounce-back, or if former President Donald Trump becomes a convicted felon prior to Election Day.  The latter may be more likely than the former. (3) Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent by the Democrats and their allies over the spring, summer and fall of 2024 in order to move the dynamic from a harshly negative referendum on the incumbent to a choice featuring the still-strikingly-unpopular former president.  (4) If and when Trump re-takes center stage in the national discourse, some of the current nostalgia may fade substantially, even if he maintains an advantage on a number of major issues.  

(5) This swing state polling from the New York Times and Siena College -- rated as an A-plus outfit by FiveThirty Eight -- also points to Trump's weakness among key demographic groups who are wavering or sliding away from Biden. And (6) Biden's deep unpopularity and Democrats' disadvantage on leading issues famously didn't translate into a red wave last fall.  All of which is to say, this snapshot in time may not last, and Trump's apparent 2024 strength at this stage of the cycle could prove to be a mirage that crumbles as time passes.  There are reasons for Republicans to fear that could well be the case.  Nevertheless.  This new batch of NYT/Siena survey data from six critical swing states is a real blockbuster, and it's sending ripples of panic and anxiety through Democratic circles:

Trump leads Biden, at or above the margin of error, in Arizona (+5), Georgia (+6), Michigan (+5), Nevada (+10), and Pennsylvania (+4), and is slightly behind but virtually tied in Wisconsin.  This would be an electoral college blowout.  Am I skeptical of some of these numbers?  Yes.  No Republican has carried Nevada in a presidential election in two decades.  It's hard to believe that Trump, who's lost the Silver State twice, is somehow up by double digits there,  Some of these cross-tabs are also wild, with some being more plausible than others.  From the Times write-up, which must have been excruciating for them to publish:

Across the six battlegrounds — all of which Mr. Biden carried in 2020 — the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent...The survey also reveals the extent to which the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Mr. Biden is fraying. Demographic groups that backed Mr. Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested, as two-thirds of the electorate sees the country moving in the wrong direction. Voters under 30 favor Mr. Biden by only a single percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Mr. Trump’s edge in rural regions. And while women still favored Mr. Biden, men preferred Mr. Trump by twice as large a margin, reversing the gender advantage that had fueled so many Democratic gains in recent years. Black voters — long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden — are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Mr. Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.

Frankly, I just cannot foresee Trump being within single-digits among young voters, let alone tied.  I similarly can't imagine more than one-in-five Black voters in these states pulling the lever for Trump over Biden.  Perhaps these groups will prove me wrong, but count me highly skeptical.  That said, notable erosion of Biden's support across any combination of these demographics, coupled with other disillusioned would-be supporters opting for alternative candidates or staying home, could doom the president's re-election.  Also, keep in mind that the Times/Siena series drastically overestimated Biden's victory margins four years ago.  It's final numbers predicted a Biden win by six points in Arizona (he won by less than half-a-point), by three points in Florida (he lost the state to Trump by three), by six points in Pennsylvania (he won by a point), and by 11 points in Wisconsin (he won by less than a point).  In these four states, this pollster was off by five to ten points, misses that all went in the same, wrong direction:

Nationally, the final NYT/Siena poll in 2020 projected a nine-point Biden popular vote victory.  His actual margin was half that.  So those are grains of salt that cut the other way.  Here's another one: It's not as if Trump is an unknown commodity that people aren't really sure about.  He's a former president with 100 percent name recognition, and about whom everyone has an opinion.  So much is baked in about him, including the fact that he's currently under four separate criminal indictments.  This isn't a mystery to voters, who responded to the Times poll the way they did anyway.  Why?  Because they see Biden as having been bad for them and their families, while Trump was good, they see Biden as too old, and they lopsidedly prefer Trump's economic results:

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Another ominous sign for Democrats is that voters across all income levels felt that Mr. Biden’s policies had hurt them personally, while they credited Mr. Trump’s policies for helping them. The results were mirror opposites: Voters gave Mr. Trump a 17-point advantage for having helped them and Mr. Biden a 18-point disadvantage for having hurt them. For Mr. Biden, who turns 81 later this month, being the oldest president in American history stands out as a glaring liability. An overwhelming 71 percent said he was “too old” to be an effective president — an opinion shared across every demographic and geographic group in the poll, including a remarkable 54 percent of Mr. Biden’s own supporters. In contrast, only 19 percent of supporters of Mr. Trump, who is 77, viewed him as too old, and 39 percent of the electorate overall...Voters, by a 59 percent to 37 percent margin, said they better trusted Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden on the economy, the largest gap of any issue. The preference for Mr. Trump on economic matters spanned the electorate, among both men and women, those with college degrees and those without them, every age range and every income level.

"The findings come after Mr. Biden’s campaign has run millions of dollars in ads promoting his record, and as the president continues to tour the country to brag about the state of the economy," the Times reports. “Voters clearly disagree."  Also, Biden's "vulnerabilities stretch across an expansive set of issues. Voters preferred Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden on immigration by 12 points, on national security by 12 points and on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 11 points. And though a 58 percent majority supported more economic and military aid to Ukraine — which aligns with Mr. Biden’s policy — that did not seem to benefit the president on broader questions of fitness to handle foreign affairs."  Just terrible overall figures for the incumbent, who fares even worse (but not really by much) than unpopular Kamala Harris in these battlegrounds.  The fresh Times/Siena outcomes may be eye-opening, but they're not exactly outliers:

I'll leave you with a new CBS poll showing Trump ahead nationally, with 73 percent of voters saying things are "going badly in America:"

It's impossible to know how things will look a year from now.  But it seems clear that if this 2020 rematch were held this week, Trump would have an excellent chance of winning -- and possibly winning big.  Parting thought: Is the New York Times poll drop, and the resulting freakout among Democrats, and Politico actually digging into this story, indications that journalists -- a core Democratic constituency -- are trying to push Biden out of the race?  The clock is ticking for any such thing to be realistic.  

UPDATE - Biden would be crushed by a 'generic Republican' (this poll also shows a 'generic Democrat' performing well against Trump.  He is trailing or tied with Ron DeSantis in all six of these states, with Nikki Haley leading him across the board, including by some hefty margins: