BTRTN: The Polling Verdict on Biden

Tom assesses the post-debate polling environment for Biden.

A few days after the June 27 debate, as many rushed to judgment on whether or not Biden should stay in the race, I offered this suggestion:

Before making any decisions, the Biden team and anyone in a position to influence its thinking must first look at the impact of the debate on Biden’s approval rating and the national election polls (both the so-called “two way” polls which pit Biden just against Trump and the “five-way” polls which include the minor candidates Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West).  If Biden has taken a substantial blow – say, a five-point or more drop in his approval rating, from the pre-debate level of roughly 40% to 35% or lower, and the gap with Trump widens to five points or more, our view is that Biden should step down.  If the effect is more marginal, a point or two, he can continue his quest to write off the debate as a bad night, akin to those suffered by Reagan and Obama in their first reelection debates and move on.

Much has happened that has further shaped the view of Biden's fitness for office since the debate, and not much of it has been helpful to Biden's case.  Journalists have run stories that generally indicate that, within the White House, Biden has been widely viewed as in decline.  Biden appeared vigorous in various post-debate rallies but was barely adequate in an unscripted 18-minute interview (surprisingly short in and of itself) with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News.  Biden said in another interview that he was “proud to be, as I said the first vice president, the first Black woman served with a Black president.”  Another clip showed him apparently “frozen” at a Juneteenth celebration.  George Clooney wrote in an editorial that he believed that Biden had slipped dramatically, and that the Biden he watched at the debate was the same Biden he had seen at a major fundraiser just a month before, far from his 2010 and even 2020 self.  All of these revelations have confirmed the swirling narrative that Biden is not up to the campaign and certainly not for four more years. 

As for the polls, they have been, in our view, bad for Biden, though perhaps not completely disastrous.  And, of course, individual polls have varied enough to give everyone a particular poll to hang onto to support their perspective, although some of those defending Biden have taken the tack of dismissing the polls entirely.  And maybe we should.  While the polls are bad, the real issue is whether Biden is capable of winning given his obvious communication difficulties.

Let’s summarize the polling results.

·        In the two-way national polls, Trump was ahead in pre-debate June polls by a single point, 46/45.  Now Trump leads by roughly three points, 46/43.  Note that Trump has not advanced in these polls, but rather Biden has lost two points to the unspecified category.  A three-point gap is substantial, especially given that Biden actually has to lead in the national polls by 2-3 points for the race to be considered “even” because of the inherent GOP bias in the Electoral College..

·        In “five-way” national polls, Trump’s pre-debate lead was again a single point, 42/41, with the other candidates receiving 9% of the vote.  Trump’s post-debate lead is 4-5 points, 44/39, with the other candidates receiving 13% of the vote.  Clearly, having real choices matters, and that will certainly be the case come November.  Behind 4-5 points behind is an enormous gap to overcome.

·        Biden’s approval rating has dropped only a point or two, to 38%.  However, it is at a low for his presidency.

The debate has clearly been the most consequential “catalyst” to date in a race characterized by its static nature, with neither candidate able to forge a convincing lead.  Nothing has moved the needle as dramatically as the debate.  Based on the post-debate gap, Trump is now in a commanding position, particularly given the state of the all-important swing state polls.

There have been three pollsters who have done polling across multiple swing states.  Emerson and Remington showed similar results, more unfavorable to Biden than pre-debate polls, while Bloomberg was a mixed bag, showing, incongruously, Biden doing better in Wisconsin and Michigan than in pre-debate polls, but far worse in Pennsylvania, and about the same in the other four swing states (Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina).  The Bloomberg poll is odd in two ways:  first, it strains credulity to think that Biden would actually improve his standing in any state post-debate, and second, it is also it is very odd that Pennsylvania would move in a different direction than in Michigan and Wisconsin.  Bloomberg looks to be the outlier among the three, with highly suspect results.

The chart below summarizes the polls, with the last two columns contrasting the averages with and without the Bloomberg numbers.  In comparing either column to the first "pre-debate" polling, clearly the race has taken a turn for the worse, with Biden weakening significantly in Pennsylvania (in all three polls), and also materially in Wisconsin, and, if one excludes Bloomberg, also in Michigan (and a bit in Arizona and Nevada). 

This is perilous for Biden.  Pre-debate he was already in difficult shape, with only one likely path to the 270 electoral votes he needs to win reelection:  winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  If he won all three, as well as all the other “solid” or “likely” blue states, he would garner exactly 270 electoral votes, no more, no less, and squeak out a victory.  Before the debate he was arguably even in all three; but he now is facing the same kind of gap in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that he faces in the four southern and western states.  Those roughly five-point leads have proven quite difficult to dent over the last six months.

Accordingly, we have lowered the BTRTN odds of Biden winning reelection from about 50/50 (47%) to 31%.

Keep in mind that this is just a snapshot, not a prediction.  (There will be no predictions at BTRTN until the night before the election.)  But that 31% is indicative of where the race stands right now.  If the election were held tomorrow, Biden would very likely lose.

Part of that calculus is that while Biden’s path to 270, already narrow, is being squeezed, it is likely that his debate performance will bring more states into play, thereby expanding Trump’s own pathways to 270.  Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Maine and Virginia, all reliably blue states, could all achieve swing state status soon enough.

In addition, of course, a poor Biden showing in November will hurt the Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate or taking control of the House.  If Biden loses, then all the GOP has to do to take the Senate is  win West Virginia, which is a near certainty.  Even if Biden wins, the Democrats would still have to win all seven battleground Senate races to get to 50 seats and control; all seven are current Democratic seats.  The GOP has zero vulnerable Senate seats, unless you count Texas or Florida (as of now, I don’t).  We have the odds of the Democrats holding the Senate at a mere 12%.

The problem with the Biden campaign is that even before the debate, he was running out of “catalysts” to propel him ahead of Trump.  Gaza shows no sign of peace; with inflation sticky at 3%, the Fed may, at most, do one rate cut in 2024; and one can hardly anticipate a Biden-led convention to provide a sizable bump.  Indeed, it was that thinking that probably led the Biden campaign team to seek an early debate, to try to shake up the race before it ossified even further.  Sure, four months is a long time, but in a race that has shown little change -- even in the face of seismic events like the Trump “hush money” conviction and a remarkable string of conservative Supreme Court rulings -- at some point you begin to wonder how it changes.  Hence the thought to call for a debate, which Trump eagerly accepted.

This “debate now” strategy, of course, rather spectacularly backfired.  It shook up the race all right, and the entire planet with it, raising questions not only about the viability of Biden’s candidacy, but his fitness for office right now.  It is hard to dimensionalize exactly how bad it was, or even find an appropriate analogy.  Imagine a baseball pitcher known for choking in big performances being handed the ball for the seventh game of the World Series and allowing home runs to the first five batters he faces.  One can imagine the pitcher’s family saying “but he improved from there”, as did Biden’s spin team at first.  Perhaps, but the damage was done.  The new phrase is that you can’t convince 50 million people to “unsee” what they have seen.

Biden took his biggest weakness, attempted to turn it on its head, and instead managed to do exactly the opposite.  It was so bad that those who were defending him (like me) quickly concluded that we were wrong, and that he must withdraw from the race.

But not everyone thinks so, including Biden himself, his family (apparently), AOC and the Congressional Black Caucus (somewhat suprisingly) and…well, who?  Often, I look at Republicans who favor Trump and ask myself how in the hell can they possibly defend him?  There are no arguments that make any sense at all.  No economic argument, no foreign policy argument, and of course no ethical argument.  But now I find myself listening to previously clear-headed Democrats espousing Biden-defense arguments that also make no sense, such as:

·        “Biden has been a good president so far.”  Well, yes, he has, but that does not mean he will continue to be one, especially if he is cognitively impaired or declining!  

·        “We owe it to Joe.”  Really?  Isn’t it the other way around?  Doesn’t he owe us an honest assessment of his capabilities?  And isn’t our goal to elect a Democrat (not to elect Biden per se), and beat Trump?

·        “The polls are wrong, remember Hillary?”  Hmm, OK, but ignore intelligence at your peril.  But if you going to critique polls, then don't, in the same breath, cite the Bloomberg and Yahoo News polls, the two that are relatively positive for Biden, and challenge the rest.  (And as for Hillary, well I don’t see Jim Comey anywhere, making 11th hour announcements that reintroduced her weakest issue.)

·        “He did well at the North Carolina and other campaign events.”  Yes, but we have four more months in which we can expect a more or less continuous flow of diminishment-indicative slips, stumbles and incoherent statements, mixed in liberally with reasonably strong performances.  Which do you think will get more attention?

·        “He won all those primaries…we should not ignore the wishes of all those voters.”  Perhaps with the debate, um, things have changed?  And that every poll since September has shown that over half the party thinks Biden is too old to run and wishes they had another choice?  Not to mention that the primaries were essentially uncontested.

·        “Joe beat Trump once; he can do it again.”  But that was 2020 Joe!  That guy could articulate a case against Trump.  The 2024 version of Joe simply can’t.  And Kamala was a prosecutor...of course she can prosecute the case against Trump.

·        “He’s got our back.”  And Kamala doesn’t?  And she’ll be able to work before 10 AM and after 4 PM on our behalf, right, and not become incoherent when struck with a common cold or the travel demands that come with the office?

·        “Kamala can’t win.”  She can’t?  Have you seen the polls that show her doing at least as well as Biden versus Trump, some slightly better?

The last two weeks have unfolded in slow-motion.  Biden was slow to defend himself; waiting an entire week (and a day) to get in front of Stephanopoulos.  He tried to set that interview up as some kind of one-off litmus test – a false standard, since it is the ongoing nature of his mental state that is at issue.  This is not the Olympics, a one-shot chance of a lifetime, rather this is a four-month slog.  Then, to quell the rising storm, Biden tried to declare it was “over” because he was staying in the race unless the “Lord Almighty comes down and tells me {to get out}.”  None of it has worked to quell the storm.

The politicians have been very careful in making their moves.  Only a handful (17 House Democrats and one Senator, as of now) have called outright for Biden to go, but clearly there are many more doubters who have yet to opine publicly.  Representative Adam Smith, one of the 17, estimated that 90 percent of his colleagues felt the same way.

Now the formidable Nancy Pelosi has spoken.  Biden may be awaiting word from the Lord Almighty, but politically Pelosi may be an even higher power.  Pelosi cleverly suggested that Biden “make up his mind” about whether to run, which sounded incongruous given that he had declared over and over his "final" decision.  What she was really saying was “not so fast, buddy,” but saying it in a way that opened a face-saving door for Biden, and giving some space for (and permission to) Democrats to continue to raise their objectives.

Biden’s performance at the post-NATO press conference was more or less typical “pre-debate Biden”: wordy, soft-spoken, with the obligatory gaffe (referring to Harris as “Vice President Trump”) -- but also quite conversant, if far from eloquent, on a wide range of foreign policy matters including Ukraine, China and Israel, and also on his views on Vice President Harris.  Essentially, the man knows his stuff, he just isn’t very good at articulating it, and that style is simply never going to improve.  It has worsened over time and will likely get even worse.  His performance was certainly far better than the debate, and better than the Stephanopoulos interview.  But it will not be sufficient to stop the bleeding.  Indeed, minutes after the press conference ended, Jim Himes became the fifteenth congressperson to call for Biden to step down (and two more have since followed Himes).

Perhaps Biden will survive.  Is it possible that he has grasped the new reality better than others in his party, and is taking a play from the Trump “no apologies” playbook?  Might this be “Access Hollywood” all over again, an apparently obvious knock-out blow that is simply not packing the wallop it once might have?  I have my doubts, but Biden hold the cards here (the delegates).  We’ll see if he is immune to the rising pressure.

The weekend will be critical.  With NATO in the rear-view mirror, the time for the reckoning has come.

Stay tuned.

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