Everyone should have this link bookmarked:538 Latest Polls archives all known US political polls and updates frequently.
Although it is obviously early, the Democratic race appears to have a clear hierarchy. Almost all national polls have Biden, Sanders, Harris, Warren in that order, with Biden around 30% and Warren in the high single digits. Sometimes Beto or Booker beats or ties Warren for fourth. Nobody else ever gets more than a few percent, except that a couple included Hillary and she got 8-10%…and one included Michelle Obama and she got 25%, tied with Biden for the lead.
On the dark side, Trump is clearly getting re-nominated, unless he is in Hell or prison by then.
In the general election, cautious, conditional optimism seems appropriate. National polls consistently show any of the plausible Democratic candidates beating Trump; Biden, and to a lesser extent Sanders, appear to be the very safest options in this regard. However, there are no signs of a landslide; Trump seems to be comfortably ahead in all the usual red States.
The massive potential turd in the punchbowl, however, is Howard Schultz. In almost every sample that included Schultz as a third option, Trump won (Schultz himself, of course, only got about 10%). Which makes me worry that even if Schultz doesn’t run, someone that the GOP brain trust sees as “Schultz-like” will.
One thing you have to take into account is, primary states work much differently than caucus states, especially with the Democrats. In a primary state, all votes for candidates who don’t get 15% or more are wasted at that level (Congressional district or statewide). However, in a caucus state, the voters for the underachieving candidates can then switch to other candidates, or to “uncommitted.”
You have to discount these things this far out. Most polling at this point is just name recognition. No one other than the hardcore will know who Buttigieg is at this point. Same with a lot of the also-rans not in the top four. But there will be.
For now, watch fundraising totals and endorsements. The polls aren’t really indicative of anything.
I agree that the polling is way too early to be meaningful, but there’s one take-away that’s worth remembering, which is that as unpopular as Trump may be, the presidential election will be a choice between Trump and someone else. And that someone else will have his or her own baggage, and voters will bring their own biases into the decision to vote.
Generally speaking, the mindset of most voters is, if something isn’t broken, there’s no need to fix anything. That is to say, if people perceive that things are going well for them and their neighborhoods and the country at large is doing okay, Trump will almost surely win re-election. It doesn’t matter how intensely his opponents don’t like him, either.
There’s another problem that Democrats have, which is a brewing conflict in their own party between moderates and ideological progressives. As it is with the GOP, the ideological wing of the Democratic party is starting to take control from the more pragmatic wing. The problem is that a moderate Democrat from Illinois, Ohio, or Pennsylvania may come from a district that doesn’t identify with progressives but the left will put them under increasing pressure. Voters in these districts could come to a kind of compromise of sorts: re-elect my moderate Democrat to keep Trump under control, but re-elect Trump to keep the House and Senate from falling into the hands of the radical left.
Of course it’s early, but it’s not THAT early. Candidates have announced and are raising money and seeking endorsements. It’s true that most of what’s being measured now is name recognition, and it’s certainly not too late for one of those currently polling 1% to emerge from the pack. Still, there’s a significant advantage to already having name recognition and being able to skip that step. It’s like the baseball standings three games into the season; you’d be a fool to think that they’re highly predictive of the final standings, but you’d still much rather be 3-0 than 0-3.
If anyone thinks polls are really completely meaningless at this time, I’ll make a wager at even odds. I’ll bet that the nominee will be one of Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, O’Rourke, or Booker, and you can have the whole rest of the field. Any takers?
BTW, 538 also has a handy endorsement tracker. Spoiler: nothing much going on there yet. Nobody has a significant number of endorsements from outside their home State.
Still very early as others have mentioned. My prediction is barring a Howard Schultz type candidacy that Trump’s ceiling is the 2016 map plus Minnesota. The Democrat’s ceiling is the 2012 map minus Ohio, which I think will go red regardless of who the Democratic nominee is. That means the upper Midwest and to a lesser extent Florida is where the 2020 battleground will be. Even though it’s early, I’ll predict that Texas and North Carolina will stay safely red, and that Virginia and the western “swing” states of Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico will stay safely blue. Hopefully the Democratic nominee is someone who will do well in those areas.
I think that Ohio will continue to be a bellweather, and that if Democrats can’t win Ohio, we’ll also continue to struggle in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan for the same reasons. We’ve got to get the working-class vote back on our side.
It’s definitely not yet time for Texas to turn (if it were possible, O’Rourke would have pulled it off against Cruz), but for North Carolina, the wildcard is whether they can fix all of their myriad problems with their voting systems. I think that the people of North Carolina are already slightly blue; it’s just not enough to overcome the systemic problems yet.
I agree, though, that Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico are no longer swing states. They’ve already swung, and are now reliable blue. Arizona just might be the next to follow.
Third-party candidates tend to drop precipitously in the polls between two years out and Election Day. Schultz would be lucky to get 3% of the vote in November 2020.
It’s too early to tell anything at this point, but I think that if the Democrats could somehow elect a moderate center-left pragmatist type, they would sweep the Rust Belt and the states that Clinton lost in 2016. Unfortunately, their path to the nomination is difficult.
While voters in certain states still hold out hope for a center pragmatist, much of the Democratic party and even many voters have given up on that idea. This is going to be a holy war for the American soul, and it’s hard to see how a pragmatist does well in that kind of environment.
Just for fun I worked up a list showing the differences between 2012 and 2016 Presidential elections. To keep it from being a distraction, I enclose it in Spoiler tags.
The first number is (Obama percent minus Romney percent); the second number (which is used to sort the states) is “anti-Trumpness” — the difference between (Obama minus Romney) and (Clinton minus Trump). Note that Utah has by far the highest anti-Trump score, though not nearly enough to flip the state blue. States that voted for both Obama and Trump are colored Black. A lighter color is used for states that were close — within 5% — in 2016.
**
Utah, -48.04 29.96
California, 23.12 6.99
Texas, -15.79 6.8
Arizona, -9.06 5.52
Massachusetts, 23.14 4.06
Dist Columbia, 83.63 2.78
Georgia, -7.82 2.69
Virginia, 3.88 1.44
Kansas, -21.72 1.12
Washington, 14.87 0.84
Maryland, 26.07 0.35
Illinois, 16.87 0.2
Idaho, -31.91 0.14
Colorado, 5.36 -0.45
Alaska, -13.99 -0.74
Oregon, 12.09 -1.11
North Carolina, -2.04 -1.62
New Mexico, 10.15 -1.93
Florida, 0.88 -2.08 ⇐⇐⇐
Louisiana, -17.2 -2.44
Oklahoma, -33.54 -2.85
Arkansas, -23.69 -3.23
Nebraska, -21.77 -3.28
Connecticut, 17.33 -3.69
South Carolina, -10.47 -3.8
New Jersey, 17.79 -3.8
Nevada, 6.68 -4.26 ⇐⇐⇐
Wyoming, -40.82 -4.95
New Hampshire, 5.58 -5.21 ⇐⇐⇐
Alabama, -22.19 -5.53
Tennessee, -20.4 -5.6
New York, 28.18 -5.69
Pennsylvania, 5.38 -6.1 ⇐⇐⇐
Minnesota, 7.69 -6.17 ⇐⇐⇐
Mississippi, -11.5 -6.33
Montana, -13.65 -6.77
Kentucky, -22.69 -7.15
Delaware, 18.63 -7.26
Wisconsin, 6.94 -7.71 ⇐⇐⇐
Indiana, -10.2 -8.71
Vermont, 35.6 -9.19
Missouri, -9.38 -9.25
Michigan, 9.5 -9.73 ⇐⇐⇐
Hawaii, 42.71 -10.52
Ohio, 2.98 -11.11
South Dakota, -18.02 -11.77
Rhode Island, 27.46 -11.95
Maine, 15.29 -12.33
Iowa, 5.81 -15.22
West Virginia, -26.76 -15.31
North Dakota, -19.63 -16.1**
I’ve placed black arrows by states where Ds should focus campaign efforts. Sorry for any errors.
Interesting chart. It looks like Wisconsin has a pretty good chance at being the tipping point state. If Wisconsin goes blue it’s likely that Michigan and Pennsylvania did as well, and if it goes red the Democrats will probably be left hoping for a Florida miracle.
Utah’s anti-Trumpness is mostly due to McMillan’s independent run. If you look at McMillan + Trump vs. Clinton, it’d look a lot more like Romney vs. Obama.
2020 will be tricky, the brain drain from the upper Midwest will continue, but the electoral votes won’t be reallocated until the 2024 election. Every college student in State College, Ann Arbor, and Madison needs to realize how important their vote is and this isn’t a time to pout over Bernie or buy into conspiracy theories about the DNC.
Digging deeper into how he takes current polls by current favorability ratings is where it gets more meaningful to me.
But then again remember that Clinton had high favorability ratingsbefore the last season began. It dropped pretty quickly to where she was far underwater on favorability by midseason.
