While there are polls showing some good news for President Joe Biden, Guy also pointed out earlier on Friday how there's reasons to be skeptical. There's also some glaring warning signs for the unpopular incumbent president desperately seeking reelection. This November election continues to look close between Biden and former and potentially future President Donald Trump, and so that Biden struggles with his 2020 coalition really isn't helping.
There's been concerns when it comes to black voters, and now women as well. Catherine Salgado at our sister site of PJ Media highlighted how "Women’s Support for Democrats Hits a 20-Year Low with Biden," per data from The New York Times. Biden's down to about an eight point lead among women, while he had a lead of about 13 points from 2020. Meanwhile, Trump continues to do well with male voters.
Sure enough, there's particular warning signs among key voters and in key battleground states:
Mr. Biden’s lead among women has slid to about eight percentage points since the 2020 election, according to an average of more than 30 polls conducted over the last six months and compiled by The New York Times. That’s down from a lead among women of about 13 percentage points four years ago.
And since the 2020 election, former President Donald J. Trump’s support among men has recovered and is back to the double-digit lead he had in 2016.
Republicans have generally held leads among men in most presidential elections going back decades. But every year that Democrats have won the presidency, they have led among women by more.
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Still, Mr. Biden’s current struggles with Black and Hispanic women are especially striking. He is winning among Black women in the KFF survey by 58 percentage points, but that represents a significant drop from his 86 percentage point margin among Black women in the approach to the 2020 election, according to an average of New York Times/Siena College polls from that election. Mr. Biden’s lead with Hispanic women has also shrunk substantially, to about 12 points. The survey found Mr. Biden’s lead among women overall to be four points.
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This trend of Democratic success with women is relatively modern. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and then George H.W. Bush won majorities of both men and women. But in the last 20 years, it has been rare for a Democrat to fall below a double-digit lead with women. The last Democrat to end a campaign with a single-digit lead among women was John Kerry in 2004.
The changes truly are pronounced. White women have gone from +2 support for Biden to -8, while black women have gone from a whopping +86 support for Biden to a much more anemic +58, and Hispanic women have gone from +40 to +12 for Biden.
Another chart points out that these dips in support is "a dip from recent highs for Democrats." Talk about how the mighty have fallen.
Considering these are Democrats we're talking about it here, it's no surprise that there's mention of the Biden reelection campaign depending on the abortion issue, which Salgado also made note of.
As the report mentioned:
The surveys show that even as abortion and democracy are key issues for a small but meaningful segment of women, concerns about inflation continue to play a more central role in the race and to benefit Mr. Trump.
In states where abortion is on the ballot, however, the KFF polls offer some evidence for the Democratic theory that the issue will be a motivating factor that drives women to vote.
Here's how two different women from two different sides of the aisle frame women voters and the issues that matter to them:
“Once the campaign kicks into high gear, abortion will rally the women,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has been studying women’s voting behavior for decades. “And as much as Trump wants to right-size himself, he can’t stop himself from bragging about how he overturned Roe v. Wade.”
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“Women are not single-issue thinkers,” said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager and a co-author, with Ms. Lake, of a book detailing the political desires of women. “Therefore, they are not single-issue voters.”
“Joe Biden and the Democrats seem to only talk to women from the waist down, since abortion is the only issue Joe Biden has an edge on in the polls,” Ms. Conway added.
Celinda Lake, that Democratic pollster quoted, goes for the same talking points as the Biden campaign does on Trump overturning Roe v. Wade. Also when does she expect this "kicks into high gear" to happen? There's just a little four months away from Election Day. There's still time, but not that much time.
The Biden campaign has also been obsessing over the abortion plenty already this year. In 2024 so far we saw that with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre causing all kinds of confusion about the issue around the time of what would be the 51st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, and we're likely to hear about it even more with the 2nd anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, officially handed down on June 24, 2022 which overturned Roe. Biden also gave a pro-abortion speech in Northern Virginia in January as well.
Lake has also been cited in pieces from The New York Times before, especially when it comes to the 2022 midterm elections, where Democrats performed far better than expected, which may have been because of the abortion issue.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a leading pro-life group, called to mind Lake's influence in a press release from last August.
As that piece mentioned:
Soon after the [Dobbs] decision in June, Democratic Party committees invested in detailed polling, hoping to drill down on what exact messaging worked best. There was a clear conclusion: The most potent messaging for Democrats was to keep the conversation broad by casting Republicans as supporting a national ban on abortion, and avoid a discussion over the details about gestational week limits.
“Debating weeks is not where we want to be,” said Celinda Lake, the longtime Democratic pollster who conducted some of the surveys. “People are terrible at math and terrible at biology.”
The New York Times also references Trump's lead there as well:
Inflation voters are more likely to be Black or Hispanic than women overall. They are more likely to be middle-aged. In Michigan, nearly 60 percent of Black women say inflation is the most important issue to their vote. A similar share of Hispanic women in Arizona say the same. For these women, inflation blows all other issues out of the water.
Overall, twice as many women say they were better off financially under Mr. Trump, the KFF surveys found. Young women, a key constituency that Democrats are hoping to retain this cycle, were nearly three times as likely to say things were better for them financially under Mr. Trump than Mr. Biden. Even so, 41 percent of young women said there was no difference between their financial situation between the two candidates. Half of Black women also said there was no difference.
