I would say probably as influential as any other mainstream media outlet. Not sure how well read but with everything going online and few physical papers being read I’m sure that has had an impact.
As to how it would help or influence Biden’s chances my guess would be how the Times conducts the interview. I would imagine the reporters would ask a bunch of bullshit about Hunter with the goal of getting a reaction rather than discussing actual policy successes or proposals. Reporting seems to me to have become about stories trending online and asking gotcha questions.
If the Biden campaign is smart they will get the President on Maddow or O’Donnell on MSNBC or some of the late night shows. He’s already been on the Stern radio show and Latenight with Seth Meyers. Both of them went well but I think the NYT has pissed his people off too much at this point. Maybe a sit down with WaPo would be a better idea. But it does strike me their is some bit of jealousy on the part of Sulzberger that he and the Times are getting frozen out.
I know we have a long way to go, but it’s looking like it might come down to Michigan and Arizona. (In this scenario, Biden wins Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, but loses Georgia and Nevada).
Which combos of Michigan and Arizona result in which which electoral college wins or losses?
I could take a minute to try out the 270-to-win interactive site, but I gotta go plant some trees…
I’ve prepared a map as you describe, except I have also left North Carolina as a toss-up. The map below includes the one blue electoral college vote in Nebraska, and the one red one in Maine.
Quick and dirty: If Biden wins Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, but loses Georgia and Nevada … Biden would need two of the three states in yellow above to eke out an electoral college victory.
There’s something funny about your map – it looks like a few electoral votes are missing. Give MI to Biden, and the other two to Trump, and still no one has 270.
EDIT: I think you might be missing DC. Add DC for Biden, and MI is enough on its own to win it.
DC’s three electoral votes are missing. There’s a way to select those even though DC’s too small to click on the main map, but I forgot to go and do that.
EDIT:
I think you might be missing DC. Add DC for Biden, and MI is enough on its own to win it.
True…but it’s amazing to me how little they’ve changed since about 2015. (Ohio and Florida getting more out of reach for Dems; Georgia becoming a battleground; Virginia and Colorado getting more out of reach for Pubs…that’s about it, I think).
The North Carolina polling (and a lot of other state-level polls, as well) still have a lot of fluff in them. You add up Biden’s and Trump’s percentages, and you get totals less than 90%, sometimes quite a bit lower if they’re five-way polls (usually Biden-Trump-Kennedy-West-Stein).
It does seem like North Carolina has been frustratingly just out of reach for Democrats in Presidential and Senate campaigns for a while (they’ve had more luck in the Governor’s office). The Biden campaign has said that they’re making a major push in North Carolina, investing heavily in staff and GOTV efforts. In an election like this, where almost every voter already has a fully formed opinion on both candidates, those efforts could be crucial.
I realize the NYT headline of their story is Trump leads in 5 states, but that’s not what the data in these polls say. He leads in 3 - AZ, GA, NV - and 3 are essentially tied. As I wrote on Saturday, if you spend your time with polls with registered voters you see an electorate more favorable to Trump. If you spend your time with likely voters you see one more favorable to Biden. This is becoming a very important part of our emerging understanding of the 2024 election, and a dynamic that is in my view very ominous for Trump. That the NYT Times centered their headline and graphics around the results with registered voters was an editorial choice.
I also think the leaving out of North Carolina from the battleground, given a series of independent polls have found the Presidential race there within margin of error, to no longer be an acceptable decision by the NYT.
Policy question-is cracking down on China considered a winning strategy for voters? Are forcing the Chinese to sell the TikTok app and move off of the land near a missile base important to them? Or will most voters not care? How do most people in the US feel about China?
You can see the spike in negative attitudes towards China beginning when Trump was nominated/elected and staying high throughout COVID and the Biden administration. 80%+ have unfavorable views towards China now.
Conservaties and older voters tend to be more negative, but a solid 30% of liberals have very unfavorable views of China and view them as an enemy of the US.
I wouldn’t say it’s a top priority for most voters, but for strongly conservative ones it is (I’ve had more than one MAGA type “inform” me that Biden is in Xi’s pocket and a stooge of the ChiComs). Remember many of them believe that COVID-19 was a Chinese biological weapon, released either on purpose or by accident.
