Political strategist Simon Rosenberg got the 2022 election right when almost everyone else got it wrong. He’s worth listening to. Here, he discusses that Washington Post/ABC poll and suggests, correctly, that they should have just thrown it out. (And the rest of the media should have ignored it.)
He has some other info you might find interesting:
A few other notes on this poll and other recent election data:
-In a recent post I talked about something I’ve been calling asymetrical engagement. It’s the idea that right now, due to Republicans having a robust primary and Democrats not that our two coalitions are not paying equal attention to the Presidential election, and polls are coming back a bit more Republican than is the actual state of things. A confirmation of this theory is the new CNN poll of New Hampshire, a state where voters are paying attention and engaged, which has Biden ahead of Trump 52-40. Biden won NH by 7 pts in 2020. So in this large sample poll of a state where ads are flying Biden is outperforming 2020 by 5 points, similar to our overperformance in special elections across the US this year.
-Given that Democrats have outperformed 2020 by high single digits in dozens of special elections across the US this year, it is very unlikely that Biden is running far below his 2020 results. For the Post poll to be correct, Biden would have to be running 22 points (!!!!!!!) below where Democrats have been running in specials across the US this year. It’s just not possible.
-We need a conversation about what it means for 2024 national polling that the 2022 was not a nationalized election. The country didn’t all move in the same direction in 2022. Most of the battleground states moved towards Democrats in 2022 (AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA), most of the rest of the country moved towards the Republicans. It’s very hard for a national poll to capture and describe an election where regions of the country or states are not all moving in the same direction. It’s why I think to really understand what’s happening in the Presidential race we are going to have to rely much more on large sample, high quality state polls. And the most recent one of those, the NH CNN poll, has Biden up 12 over Trump, 5 points above his 2020 result. Will national polls now need to have a certain percentage of voters in the battleground states to be legit? It’s possible, and it’s something we need to talk about.
Here’s the election data I’m focused on right now:
The Democratic Party Is Strong and On A Very Good Popular Vote Run – Democrats have won more votes in 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections, the best popular vote run of any political party in US history. In the last 4 Presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the vote, our best showing over 4 elections since FDR’s Presidency. Can we improve on that performance and get to 55% nationally in 2024? I think so.
Democrats Keep Outperforming Expectations – In a “red wave” year, 2022, Democrats gained ground from 2020 in 7 key battlegrounds: AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA. We also picked up 4 state legislative chambers, 2 governorships, and 1 US Senate seat. As we’ve written 2022 was not a single nationalized election, but really two elections – a bluer election in the battleground where we gained, and a redder election outside where we did not. We’ve seen this strong Dem performance continue into 2023 with impressive wins in CO, FL, OH and WI and in special elections across the US. A new 538 analysis: Democrats have been wining big in special elections finds Dems outperforming the partisan lean in districts this year by an average of 10 points in close to 40 special elections across the US – this is a big deal, and similar to what we saw post-Dobbs last year. The Daily Kos special election tracker now has Dems up 7.6 points over 2020 in 27 elections this year. Very encouraging stuff.
The Blueing of the Southwest – Democrats are having their best run in the Southwest since the 1940s and 50s. In 2004 Bush won AZ, CO, NM, NV, Rs controlled 5 of their 8 Senate seats, 14 of their 21 House seats. In 2020 Biden was the first Democratic President to win all 4 of these states in a single election since FDR. Today Rs control none of those 8 Senate seats and we control 14 of 24 House seats there. Our success with Hispanic voters and in heavily Hispanic parts of the country remains one of the Democratic Party’s most successful party-wide efforts over the past generation of US politics.
Here’s how Ron Brownstein wrote up my current take on things in a recent CNN article:
Simon Rosenberg, the long-time Democratic strategist who was proven right as the most prominent public skeptic of the “red wave” theory in 2022, argues that Trump, in particular, is unlikely to match his 47% of the vote from 2020 if the GOP nominates him again. “We are starting at a place where it is far more likely in my mind that he gets to 45% than he gets to 49%,” Rosenberg said. “And if he gets to 45%, we have the opportunity to get up to 55%. The key for Democrats is we have to imagine growing and expanding our coalition for it to happen.”
Beyond the personal doubts about Trump among voters outside the GOP coalition, Democrats such as Rosenberg and Anzalone see several other factors that give Biden a chance to widen his winning margin from the last election. Perhaps the most important of those are the slowdown in inflation, continued strength of the job market, and signs of accelerating recovery in the stock market – all of which are already stirring some gains in consumer confidence. Democrats are encouraged as well by recent declines in the number of undocumented immigrants attempting to cross the Southern border and the crime rate in big cities – two issues on which polls show substantial disappointment in Biden’s performance.
Another change since 2020 is the broad public backlash, especially in Democratic-leaning and swing states, against the 2022 Supreme Court decision ending the constitutional right to abortion, which Trump has directly claimed credit for engineering through his nominations to the court. Finally, compared to 2020, the electorate in 2024 will likely include significantly more young people in Generation Z, a group that is preponderantly supporting Democrats, and fewer Whites without a college degree, now the GOP’s best group.
All of these factors, Rosenberg said, create “an opportunity” for Democrats to amass a bigger majority next year than most consider possible. But to get there, he argues, the party will need to think bigger, particularly in its efforts to mobilize younger voters aging into the electorate. “It’s a man on the moon kind of mindset,” Rosenberg said. “We have to want to go there to get there. We have to build a strategy to take away political real estate from the Republicans because they are giving us the opportunity to take it away from them.”
Many Republican strategists privately agree that the combined effect of the January 6 insurrection and the court’s abortion decision will make it difficult for Trump to expand his support from 2020 if the GOP nominates him again.
The Post poll was bad. We keep winning elections across the US this year, running way ahead of our 2020 results. Joe Biden is a good President, the country is better off and we have a strong case to make for re-election. They are saddled with Trump, Dobbs and insurrection. In every way possible, as we head into 2024, I would much rather be us than them.
Me too …
This may also be of interest:
If you want to do a deeper dive on election data come to one our our upcoming events or my talks to allied grassroots groups in the coming weeks. Here’s the latest schedule. All are free and guests are welcome. And if you want to work on a 2023 election, early vote has begun in Virginia – here are ways you can help.