It’s early, but it’s worth thinking about this anyway. I assume you’ve already read or heard about the NY Times poll this week which has everyone scared to death that Donald Trump will win again in 2024. (I would just say that people need to remember that almost every re-elected incumbent was very unpopular at this stage of the campaign. It’s the normal dynamic.) This discussion with the pollster Nate Cohn is instructive about the possible advantages for Biden and also the possible roadblocks, one of which is terrifying to me:
Michael Barbaro: … [G]iven that at this moment he’s tied with Trump at 43 percent of the electorate that was polled here, that leaves us with about 14% of the general election voters who seem up for grabs. So what can you tell us about that group of people?
Nate Cohn: Well, the main thing that characterizes this group is that they don’t like either of these candidates, but to be honest they’re not a bad group for Democrats on paper, and they’re not a bad group for Joe Biden.
On paper, this is a group that’s disproportionately young. It’s disproportionately black and Latino. It’s disproportionately Democratic. And maybe most importantly, it disproportionately supported Joe Biden in the last presidential election.
Now, the fact that they supported Biden last time doesn’t mean they’ll support him again, but it suggests that the Democrats and Joe Biden specifically ought to have an easier time than Donald Trump making gains on this other 14% of the electorate.
Michael Barbaro: Hmm, so this could ultimately be a decisive group of voters in a general election match up between Trump.
Nate Cohn: It most certainly could be, but they’re not undecided in the sense that they don’t know who these people are and have to make up their minds. Again, these are people who are sort of recoiling at the thought of having to choose between these two and maybe not even getting to the point where they can tell us the decision that not only they made last time, but that they make again. And you know, there’s also risk, of course that they really don’t vote or vote for someone else in a third party candidate as an expression of that dissatisfaction.
Michael Barbaro: Right. So a general election featuring these two candidates could very much be about not just who earns the affections of this 14% of voters who would break a tie, but who this 14% dislikes the least?
Nate Cohn: Yes, and right now, if the election is about who they dislike the least, it’s really good for Joe Biden. I mean, this is a group that’s very hostile towards Donald Trump, even if it doesn’t love Joe Biden by any stretch?
Now I do want to caution a little bit on how much upside there is for Joe Biden here. If we take these voters and we assume that they’ll vote in 2024, the same way that they voted in 2020, Joe Biden’s lead only grows to two points. So it’s not like there’s some landslide around the corner once these 14% of voters make up their minds.
Michael Barbaro: Right. That makes me want to touch on something you just mentioned which is the possibility of the third party candidate. When you take math like a 2% lead or a tie, a decision by a third party to enter this race whether it’s the Green Party or no labels, which is thinking of putting up a candidate in this general election, that could prove extremely important with math this tight.
Nate Cohn: Yeah, it’s not hard to imagine how a minor party candidate or a series of minor party candidates could attract considerable support. You know back in 2016, the minor party candidates got something like 6% of the vote. Now, the voters are not as negative on Biden or Trump as they were on Clinton and Trump back in 2016, but there shades of 2016 here where the voters near the center of the electorate, really don’t like either of these people, which was not true in 2020 when most voters did have a favorable view of Joe Biden.
Michael Barbaro: So, I mean, how are you thinking about the rest of this campaign given the snapshot of the race that we have just taken with these polls this many months before people start voting?
Nate Cohn: To me, the biggest take away is that it means that all of the events of the last few years : the Stop the Steal movement, the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe versus Wade, all these criminal indictments, have not disqualified Donald Trump, at least not when he’s facing a Joe Biden with a 39% approval rating. And this race is competitive and at least right now the Democrats have work cut out ahead of them and the events of the last three years haven’t brought this race to an early end as some might have thought.
What do I find terrifying in that? Cornell West running on the Green Party ticket. I worry that idealistic young people and fed up Black people will decide to make a protest vote. On the other hand, Donald Trump is so odious that it’s still pretty unlikely. But there is a danger…
An analysis from FiveThirtyEight found that in 38 special elections held so far this year, Democrats have outperformed the partisan lean — or the relative liberal or conservative history — of the areas where the races were held by an average of 10%, both romping in parts of the country that typically support the party while cutting down on GOP margins in red cities and counties, too.
For instance, the Democratic candidate in a Wisconsin State Assembly special election last month lost by just 7 points in an area where Republicans have a 22-point edge and where Trump beat Biden by almost 17 points in 2020.
In a New Hampshire special election in May for a state House seat, the Democrat won by 43 points, far beyond the party’s estimated 23-point edge in the district.MORE: Where abortion stands in each state a year since the overturning of Roe v. Wade
The data from FiveThirtyEight does not include regularly scheduled off-year elections, including the Wisconsin Supreme Court race earlier this year in which the liberal candidate, now-Justice Janet Protasiewicz, won by 11 points — in a state famous for its wafer-thin election margins.
“I think when you when you look at things like this, one special election doesn’t mean much on its own. But when you start to see real consistency, it can certainly become predictive of the next election cycle,” said Ben Nuckels, a Wisconsin Democratic strategist who consulted on Protasiewicz’s campaign.
For comparison, according to FiveThirtyEight, Democrats outperformed the weighted partisan lean by about 4% in special elections held between the 2018 midterms and the 2020 elections, when Biden won the White House by 4.5% but Democrats underperformed in House races.
Conversations with eight Democratic and Republican operatives in swing states show some repeated explanations for this success: the public’s general support for abortion access after the Supreme Court reversed the national guarantee for the procedure last year along with angst and anger over Trump’s comeback bid, given how divisive he remains — two factors which might even overcompensate for Biden’s sagging approval ratings.
“Republicans have not had a good election night since before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. And, honestly, it seems like post-Roe Republicans couldn’t find their groove even if a DJ played their favorite song on repeat,” Nuckels said. “So I think Democrats are in a very good position here going forward.”
Dems need to keep their heads down and do the work. There is more going on in this political culture than Biden’s age.