Looking at the realclearpolitics.com national Biden-Trump rolling polling average, Biden was ahead by 5.4 percent on Feb. 7, 2020.
Today, Feb. 7, 2024, Trump is ahead by 1.7 percent.
Day after day, week after week, month after month, the four-years-ago to today comparison goes pretty much that way. I’ve never once seen anyone other than me considering this a key metric, so it must not be as indicative as I think. But I don’t like it.
Yes, this!
Get his face before millions of people, say a couple of normal, friendly things, then out.
Marianne Willliamson, we hardly knew ye.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/07/politics/marianne-williamson-suspends-presidential-campaign/index.html
I think one of the perks of being a third-party presidential candidate is calling the (D) and (R) presidential candidates on Election Night in November to “concede,” and them both being pissed off. Only a few seconds of pleasure, but worth it.
Of course, the problem is that the staffers probably wouldn’t screen the call through in the first place.
I think @DigitalC’s point is that at this point Biden wasn’t the nominee. In fact, he looked pretty unlikely to be the nominee. So head-to-head polls between the 3rd place candidate in the Democratic primary and a sitting president are not very analogous to a sitting president and the leading candidate in the GOP primary (who most voters hope doesn’t get the nomination).
The big unknown at this point, from a polling perspective, is to what extent the fact that a large majority of each party would prefer a different candidate is messing up the polling. Once that possibility is gone, and voters come to terms with the fact that the choice really is Biden or Trump, polls will be much more meaningful.
Also, remember how much happened after Feb 7, 2020. COVID hadn’t even hit the US yet (or at least not enough to cause the lockdowns and everything else that happened that year).
Because much like right now they were comparing a sitting president vs a hypothetical. That’s why Haley polls so much better than Trump, she is a much bigger hypothetical than a former president.
RealClearPolitics.com primary season presidential polling averages had Biden ahead four years ago yesterday, today, and the entirety of 2019 and 2020, except for late February 2020 when Biden was second to Bernie Sanders.
COVID did not move 2020 Biden-Trump polling.
The hypothesis that Biden will be helped by Trump possibly being convicted of a felony makes sense to me and is a reason why truly loyal Republicans should vote against Donald in the primaries. I’m far from certain of a such a conviction because of trial delays and juries being unpredictable – but it’s a reason why Biden may pull ahead. However, the hypothesis that voters will change their preference because Biden got a nomination they didn’t want him to have seems to me the old clutching at straws.
Other events now unknown may change things. But, historically, Biden’s general election presidential races are unusually static.
“Trump is ahead by 1.7%” seems rather meaningless when the error in the polls is more than 2%. Polls do not vote, voters vote. The last record we have of voters was in 2022. Republicans did not gain much. The party has lost its power on independents in particular.
(in there: … they instead narrowly won 4 seats over the 218 seats needed for a majority)
The polls this far out are notoriously unreliable, and I’d say more so this year than in others because we live in very volatile times.
I think who becomes president will very much depend on the events of the next few months, and not on the events that happened in the past.
Special counsel Robert Hur declines to pursue charges against Biden in classified documents case.
Unfortunately the reasons for this are not good for Biden. Hur reported that Biden presents as an “elderly man with a poor memory” who could not remember when his term as VP had ended or when his term as POTUS began.
I’m actually surprised some Fox reporter hasn’t tried to pull a memory/senility related gotcha at a press conference or other public event.
This is bullshit partisan sniping from a Republican special prosecutor. Totally unnecessary under the remit of his position.
It remains bullshit that special prosecutors always have to be Republicans, no matter who’s appointing them.
I’m wondering where the medical diagnosis is in this.
If this is just the opinion of a lawyer, it’s nothing more than flinging an insult.
No, it’s crafting a headline.
That is only if Kennedy is in the race, but he wont be.
Other polls show mixed results.
But 1.7% is nothing, thats within the margin of error.
Right.
trump mixed Haley up with Pelosi.
Trump mixed up the woman he raped, E. Jean Carroll, with the woman he was married to, Marla Maples.
The numbers I gave were for the two-man race. I didn’t include third parties because, most cycles, they generate early headlines and then don’t get enough ballot access to be a big factor.
As mentioned before, 538 won’t start showing averages for a while, so I did not include them.
The realclearpolitics.com averages are typically based on about ten polling organization with a range of sample sizes. The average is for the most recent poll of each organization. If you add up the number polled in all of them, it is so high that you can say there is very little sample size error. On the other hand, you could say – and I would concede – that a sample size of ten polls, with slightly different methodologies, is tiny. So I don’t take the 1.7 percent literally. But that isn’t my real point – what I don’t like, in terms of results, is the comparison of hundreds of polls in 2019 and early 2020 to hundreds of averaged polls at the same points four years later. Biden is behind where he was four years ago by a lot more than 1.7 percent.
Sure, because a lot of young dems and indy voters are hoping for a white Knight Dem candidate- young, not-white, maybe female and charismatic. In other words Obama.
But once that mythical creature doesnt show up, and it is fascist old trump vs gool old Biden, they will vote Biden.
Or maybe they today say they would vote for Biden because they like him, despite expecting him to drop out. And when it’s clear to them Joe won’t ever drop out, they will get huffy about it and move into the undecided camp.
Or maybe, like me, poll respondents will say who they prefer if the choice turns our to be Biden and Trump.
Can events influence the race? Yes! Is Biden clinching the nomination the kind of event that would move this race? Well, historically, there is a post convention bounce, so in that sense, I agree with you. Do the Democrats usually get a bigger bounce? I doubt it but have not checked.
Is Biden going to debate Trump? That debate could really matter, one way or another. And if he doesn’t debate him, that will not look good either unless it’s Trump who refuses to debate.
Would this be the first modern presidential election where one of the two main candidates refused to debate?