Political Insanity & Trump’s Secret Weapon? Top 3 Takeaways

Political Insanity & Trump’s Secret Weapon? Top 3 Takeaways – May 23rd, 2024    

1. The definition of insanity. Poll watching during an election year is an occupational hazard. Given the sheer volume of polling that’s pumped out during a presidential election cycle there’s new material presented from multiple places most days. For that reason, and because one poll never constitutes a trend, it’s rare that I take time to highlight the results of any one poll. Usually if I do it’s because the results of the poll are so decisive that even if the pollster was off by quite a bit the result of what the data is reflecting would still be the same. There’s one other instance in which I’m occasionally inclined to say something about a polling result. It's when there are answers within a given poll’s sample that tell a story. I found one of those stories in the polling produced by the Economist/YouGov yesterday. One of them was this. Michael Cohen appears to be about the least popular person known to exist (I say about because Vladimir Putin is the only figure polled who had a lower favorability rating – by comparison Stormy Daniels has a favorability rating that’s nearly double Cohen) but mostly because of this: 13%, 24%, 39% but also this: Democrats +4%. I’ll explain. Among registered voters in the Economist/YouGov polling only 13% say they currently approve of the job that congress is doing. Just 24% of potential voters are living real life episodes of Encino Man and think the country is heading in the right direction. And yes, there are 39% of folks who can vote that somehow or another can think of Joe Biden and go yeah – give me some more of that guy’s sweet political action. But obviously those are all atrocious numbers. 13%, 24% and 39% approval numbers are clearly big-time indictments of what’s happening politically in this country from the top down. That’s also not new and thus not particularly newsworthy. What struck me was what the perceived best answer at this point is by most who were surveyed that way.  
2. More Democrats. The same people in the sample who are overwhelmingly unhappy with President Biden’s performance, with Congress’ performance, and with the overall direction of this country said that given the choice today 4% more of them than not would back Democrats. Hence my top takeaway today being the definition of insanity. Seriously, if you’re unhappy with the federal government now and you get even more Democrats what exactly do you think you’re going to get? Perhaps inflation over 9% - you know like the last time that Democrats had uniliteral control of the federal government. At the same time, it’s hard to blame them. The small bit of control Republicans have had in Congress, with their razor thin House majority over the past 16 months hasn’t exactly inspired confidence. And it could be that the 1,560 registered voters who took that poll and produced that result are outliners on the party preference issue to a certain extent. But if they are probably not by much. In an average across all polls Donald Trump is shown with a 1.1% lead over Joe Biden head-to-head, a lead that grows to 2.8% with third-party options mixed in. In those same polls Democrats are the preferred party over Republicans by 1.6%. This is the damage that the House Republican infighting (including the ill-advised ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy) appears to have done. It’s not like Democrats have passed policies that have made the lives of Americans better. However, Republicans – which were the favored party by 2.5% more voters in the midterm elections under two years ago, have managed to turn that into about a two-point deficit today and they have no one to blame but themselves (with special consideration paid to Matt Gaetz and Majorie Taylor Greene). What I don’t think can be argued is that we deserve better than what both parties have delivered in Washington...unless steamy piles of poo are your thing. Which ya know with 39% approval for Joe Biden suggests for many that’s the case. But there’s also one other interesting nugget derived from yesterday’s polling expedition.  
3. This is as good as it gets for Biden. I’ve covered every presidential election starting with the 2000 election and I’ve been a political wonk since The Contract With America was a new thing. There's one thing I’ve never seen until this cycle. The more likely a person is to vote, the more likely they’ve been to support Republican presidential candidates (and vice-versa). This has long been the reason that you’ve had leftist interests in media and elsewhere hype “non-partisan” voter registration efforts like “Vote or Die” and the like that are aimed at the lowest common denominator. But should they do that again this year that could backfire. In the same Economist/YouGov polling the group of Americans Joe Biden is the least popular with are those who aren’t registered to vote. Joe Biden’s approval rating drops from 39% approval with registered voters to 36% with adult only samples. This shows two things. There is a potential non-traditional voter registration opportunity for the Trump team this year. Also, should those who aren’t already registered to vote choose to do so in order to vote this year – it could represent significant upside to Trump’s performance beyond the numbers we’re already seeing (and potentially down ballot for Republicans as well). In other words, at this point in the cycle when polls are reported using only “registered” or “likely voter” samples, it appears to be as good right now for Biden as it gets. If non-registered voters get engaged, we could be talking about the potential for some surprising results in Trump’s favor come November.