5 Things About The 2024 Election — Late January 2024

Where things stand right now in the Presidential Race

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

• Let’s start with the obvious: this election is wide open. Polls at this stage of the race don’t really mean much, but they are somewhat useful snapshots of what’s going through American voter minds at the moment. In other words, I am not using current polls to make inferences on what the future holds in November and neither should you.
• Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are polling poorly. Trump is currently ahead in the Real Clear Politics average by 4 points, which may excite the MAGA crowd and make Democrats paranoid, but there are lot of pitfalls here. Quality surveys have been few and far between. Polling has consistently shown that if Trump is convicted in any of the three criminal cases that have a shot at going to trial before November (his Georgia RICO case isn’t), his support will quickly evaporate. On the other hand, many people are still angry at Biden, blaming him (unfairly) for inflation and the issues at the border. Trump has frequently failed to hit more than 50% in the lower quality national surveys.
• This Texas poll is weird. Polls this early are weird, but some of the surveys have been rather nonsensical. A recent poll in Texas had Trump up 8 points on Biden; conversely, in the race between Senate Class II seat race between incumbent Republican Ted Cruz and Democratic congressman Colin Allred, Cruz was only up 2 points. Emerson is an excellent pollster, but I am dismissing this as an outlier. Texas is an R+5 state at best.

• Don’t be surprised if this turns out to be similar to 1988. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis started 1988 with an enormous advantage in polling over incumbent Vice President George H.W. Bush, who had announced his candidacy in late 1987. That advantage expanded to 10 points by the summer of 1988 until began to erode as Dukakis ran a pretty bad campaign and the Bush campaign showed no mercy in their campaign advertising. Momentum swung into Bush’s favor by convention season; Bush, who ran like an incumbent, ended up winning in a landslide. While I don’t forsee a landslide Biden victory (I wish and if there was any justice in this world, he would win in a landslide), I do see the pendulum swining back in Biden’s favor by the summer…
• …However, Democrats should start getting concerned if Biden is not ahead by the summer. If Biden is still polling behind Trump by summer, then Democrats should begin to get concerned. Democrats are going to have to campaign on emotion and on issues that actually resonate with voters. The Biden-Harris campaign has to drill into voters heads that Republicans have nothing to offer voters except to whine and bitch about Democrats and siphon their individual rights. I would like to see much more fearmongering on the part of Democrats, because whoever is more effective a negative partisanship is going to prevail in November.

So what’s the bottom line?

• Trump has momentum, but the Biden-Harris team shouldn’t panic and the race is in toss-up territory. Anyone trying to make a prediction on the final outcome in November based upon current polling data is misguided.
• Polling is a more of a story about voters being mad at Biden over policy issues (i.e. inflation, immigration, and Middle East) rather than voters ready to line up behind Trump.
• If anything, the Biden-Harris campaign needs to focus on shoring up support in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Those four states will decide the election.
• The Biden-Harris campaign better dispatch a policy team to meet with Arab-American activists and leaders in Michigan.
• Polling is non-sensical at this point; start taking it seriously after Super Tuesday.