Q&A of the Day – How Will the Presidential Debate Impact the Presidential Race?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
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Today’s entry: Brian, love the show and the analytics. As a teacher I also appreciate that you always show your work as well. You mentioned that the previous debate between Trump and Biden moved the polls by about two points but that it was a big enough move to have decided the election. It appears that Trump is polling substantially ahead of where he was on Election Day 2020 and yet he only narrowly lost four years ago. How big of a bump would Biden have to get from this debate to be on par with where he was four years ago accounting for the polls that obviously under sampled Trump’s support?
Bottom Line: I’m glad you love the show. I love next level questions like the one you’ve asked me. I’ll start by saying that your instincts are right about this one. Even if presidential debates evidentially do now happen in June, presidential elections can’t be won in June and so I haven’t yet traveled down the path you’re traveling because it’s premature to suggest that this election could be a blowout election, but the fact of the matter is that it absolutely could be. The primary reason for this is that presidential elections are first and foremost a referendum on the incumbent president. That’s also what made last night’s debate a different dynamic. The roles were reversed. No longer was Donald Trump the mostly unpopular incumbent in the middle of a pandemic on the hot seat. No matter what CNN wanted to say or do Joe Biden was the even more unpopular incumbent president on the hot seat. Presidential elections in reelection bids aren’t overly complicated. If as a country we’re generally happy with the incumbent, they’ll win. If we’re generally unhappy with them, they’ll lose.
Gallup is the oldest and the original presidential pollster. Here’s what the survey says... The lowest approval rating for an incumbent president in June who went on to win reelection was Barack Obama’s 46% in 2012. Where is Joe Biden today? In Gallup’s survey he’s at 38%. That’s the first number that jumps out at me in answer to your question. How big of a bump would Joe Biden need to get from this debate to simply pull even at this stage of his presidency with the lowest performing winner? Eight points. That’s a big number. Show of hands. Who thinks Joe Biden got an eight-point bump last night? That’s one way of looking at this analytically at this stage in the electoral process. So, let’s take this one step further.
Based on Biden’s current performance where would project to finish? The two closest performing presidents to Joe Biden are Donald Trump and George H.W. Bush. On this date Donald Trump’s approval rating was one point higher than Joe Biden’s and H.W. Bush’s approval rating was one point lower than Biden’s. In 2020 Donald Trump won 232 electoral college votes. In 1992 George H.W. Bush won 168 electoral college votes. Notice how this line of analysis holds true to form this through exercise. Trump was performing 2-points better than Bush at this point and went on to win 68 additional electoral college votes than Bush. Using this type of incumbency analysis President Biden would be projected to win an estimated 200 electoral college votes. What this means is that using incumbency analysis alone a generic ballot Republican challenger would theoretically be pacing towards a 338 to 200 win in electoral college votes. As for the more liner approach...
My Anatomy of a Swing State Series is designed to account for all of the specifics in this race including the impact of third-party candidates in individual states. As I noted in Wednesday’s update... Trump is currently shown with a 312 to 226 vote advantage. This washes somewhat similarly with the incumbency analysis. If you wanted to be super literal, you could say that a generic ballot Republican theoretically would be performing 26 electoral college votes better than Trump currently is against Biden. That seems entirely plausible given that Trump has a net negative favorability rating. However, either way one might choose to look at this race Trump currently and historically has a sizeable lead in this race.
So, in answer to your original question Joe Biden would need an eight-point bump from last night’s debate through Election Day to be comfortably in position to win reelection. He would need a minimum of a five-point bump to potentially be able to make up the 70 electoral college vote gap he has with the incumbency tracker, and he would need a minimum four-point bump to be positioned to win under my swing state analysis tracker. For these reasons last night’s debate mattered more for President Biden than it did for former President Trump. Although it’s worth remembering that today’s another huge news day that will quickly turn over the news of the debate. The Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling is due and in under two weeks Trump will be sentenced in his New York state case. So, stand by for more news...