Yes, we know to take polling with a grain of salt right now. But the media went nuts over that outlier CNN poll showing Trump ahead six points. Crickets for these two legit polls in the past week.
Old vs young, rural vs urban, college vs non-college, Democrat vs Republican the usual (although the inverted old vs young is a little weird but I’d guess it’s Gaza.)
However, there are some interesting observations. RFK pulls more from Trump which is the second poll that shows that. Self-identified moderates are for Biden, which is good, and the battleground is definitely still in the suburbs.
About those swing states? It’s a tie:
And it’s a 46-45% race in the seven expected swing states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Some other issues:
Support for abortion rights remains widespread: Americans by 66-32% oppose the U.S. Supreme Court decision that did away with the constitutional right to abortion and by essentially the same margin say their own state should allow access to abortion in all or most cases.
Biden’s executive orders to forgive student loan debt get a mixed to negative reception: 42% say he’s doing too much in this regard, 22% too little and 34% the right amount. Among those younger than 40, 30% say he’s doing too much to forgive these loans; this jumps to 53% of those age 50 and older.
Thirty-nine percent call it highly important to them whom Biden picks as his running mate; 35% say the same for Trump. Overall, 54% say Biden should replace Kamala Harris as his choice for vice president; among Democrats, however, 76% say he should keep Harris. It’s about the same among Biden supporters.
Eighty percent call undocumented immigration a problem nationally, including 54% who call it a major problem. Locally, in their own community, many fewer call it a problem, 46%, or a major problem, 22%. It’s seen as a problem locally, and a major problem nationally, particularly by Republicans and conservatives.
Passage of a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine did not substantially impact attitudes on the subject. Thirty-nine percent of Americans say the United States is doing too much to help Ukraine, up 5 points from January but about the same as it was last fall. Twenty percent say the United States is doing too little; 39%, the right amount — both essentially unchanged.
It’s so interesting how those of us who follow all this stuff closely think these issues are going to land and then see how they actually do. It turns out that we pundit types are often wrong. Imagine that…
This NPR/Marist poll has similar results:
That poll showed Biden ahead among registered voters. (I guess they didn’t break down likely voters but it;s fair to say that it would show Biden even farther ahead if they did.)
These are legitimate polls by major media organizations that don’t seem to have gotten much attention, probably because they show Biden ahead of Trump and the media just doesn’t seem to believe them. I wouldn’t be alarmed if it weren’t for the fact that they seem to be much more inclined to promote the polls showing the opposite.
The race is very tight six months out. That’s frightening. But it’s not the kiss of death by any means. It’s just going to be trench warfare all the way to election day. So buckle up.