16 Polls Have Biden Up/Other 2024 Election Notes - It’s been a very good week of polling for Joe Biden and the Dems. With Data for Progress coming in this morning at 47-46 for Biden, and Marquette University 52-48, there are now 16 polls taken since late February showing Biden ahead: (via 538):

52-48 Marquette (this week)
47-46 Data For Progress (this week)
50-48 NPR/Marist (this week)
42-40 Big Village (this week)
44-42 Morning Consult (this week)
48-45 Quinnipiac
44-43 Noble Predictive
44-43 Economist/YouGov (March 19)
47-45 FAU/Mainstreet
44-43 Morning Consult (March 11)
46-45 Public Policy Research
50-48 Ipsos/Reuters
45-44 Civiqs
47-44 Kaiser Family Foundation
51-49 Emerson
43-42 TIPP

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In 2022 there were polls showing Republicans with an advantage (many paid for or conducted by GOP aligned organizations), and lots of other polls showing the election close and competitive. Many commentators choose to dismiss the polls more favorable to Dems, and focused on those more favorable to Rs. (Note: that is the likely reason Nate Silver got fired from 538) It is how so many fell for the red wave that that never came.

The responsible thing for commentators and analysts to do now, in 2024, is to point out that not all the data is pointing in the same direction; that there are polls favorable to the Rs (like the new WSJ polls) and there are all these other polls favorable to Biden and the Dems. Another responsible thing to do is to point out that in a week of very good polling for Biden and the Dems the one major poll showing good news for Rs - the low-sample size/high margin of error WSJ polls - was paid for by Rupert Murdoch and conducted by Trump’s own pollster; and thus centering one’s understanding about the 2024 election around data they provide is, um, not a reasonable thing to do. This is particularly true given Murdoch’s Fox News was found guilty in court of maliciously lying about the 2020 election.

My view is the election is becoming bluer, we are gaining ground. Trump is no longer ahead in the election or favored - saying so is outside the data in front of us. It has long been my view, and the view of the Biden campaign, that as we got deeper into the general election and our coalition started paying more attention, Biden would jump out to a modest lead. That appears to be what is happening now.

I also do not subscribe to the school of thought that the battleground leans more Republican than the popular vote. It may happen. But it didn’t happen in 2022, and the 2024 battleground knows and has repeatedly rejected MAGA. Post Dobbs MAGA had a disastrous showing in the battleground in 2022, and we just don’t know what is going to happen this year. I think Dobbs changed everything, and so comparisons to 2016 or 2020 are in my view very very risky.

In addition, polling is getting sloppier and much less rigorous. Back when I was more involved with the stuff, we were not allowed to analyze cross tabs with a low number of respondents because the margin of error in doing this is so high. Now, Nate Cohn and others are writing headlines for voter segments predicating national outcomes for voting groups based on the answers of a few hundred respondents (just 205 non white no college age votes in the poll that has driven so much coverage). It is mind blowing to me that the pollster, Siena College, is allowing this to happen. The result? 15 point plus swings in the responses of demographic groups from poll to poll (which is what happens when you have small sample sizes and a margin of error over 10%). This crosstab data that the Times and others (like Axelrod) are basing predictions that the voter electorate is making massive changes is basically worthless. This is why there is so much inconsistency in the polls.

Finally, pollsters are increasingly weighting responses to get the results they want. The Times poll — for some reason — weighted the voter poll to make it go from a +1% Democratic electorate to a +3% GOP electorate. The electorate in 2020 was +1% Dem and the trend is that the electorate is getting more Democratic and not less. The Times did not explain why they did this but presumably believe that the Trump electorate will increase from past historic levels of turnout (in 2020 and 2016). It’s a massive assumption that was made somewhat casually. Unfortunately, this kind of weighting to result seems to be happening more and more as pollsters try to work with models and responses they don’t view as ideal or that correspond to the results they want or believe is correct.

In addition, while it has gotten more expensive to do good polling, it has gotten cheaper to do bad polls (via robocalls, email, internet response). Polling has also now become widely accessible (whereas in the past it was a specialized field). You or I could do a very bad poll right now via existing online tools. The margin of error for polls done cheaply (and with small samples) is huge and not predictive. Unfortunately, the prominence of the polling averages — a valid way to reduce margin of error when the average was of a lot of high quality polls — and the low cost and availability of bad polling has meant that political actors can and are flooding the polling averages with bad polls designed to support their candidate (and the narrative they are pushing to further that support). You just need to create a seemingly credible group name for the pollster and you are in, like this one from “Mainstream Research” that polled only 250 respondents to make claims about North Carolina. It’s absurd.

So, polling, while another point of data, is a much diminished tool and is no longer nearly as predictive of actual electoral outcomes as it was in the past. .

“ Adam Schiff has spent more than $10 million *boosting* our Republican opponent. Let us explain:

In October, former baseball player Steve Garvey got into the race. Polls initially showed him in third, behind us and Adam Schiff.

Then the Schiff campaign decided to go all in for Steve Garvey. The campaign itself has spent more than $10 million to consolidate conservative support behind Garvey. Their super PAC has spent millions more, with ads from both airing on Fox News constantly.

Garvey has risen in the polls, despite not running a single TV ad of his own or taking any sort of real policy position in our debates. In polls, he’s now consistently tied with Katie or slightly ahead.

This cynical play to boost a Republican into the top two may work to further Schiff’s own career, but it threatens to box out qualified Democratic women (and leave CA without a woman Senator for the first time in over thirty years).

As reporters have said, “If Schiff succeeds in juicing Republican turnout for Garvey, it stands to reason that those Republicans will also vote Republican down the ballot. Garvey himself has no shot of winning, but there may well be closer races in purple House and state legislative districts, school boards, and more that could be swung by a surge in Republican turnout that Schiff is spending millions to stoke.”

This is a dangerous play that has national implications. Republicans hold the House majority by just a few seats, and several flippable districts are here in California. If our state has a competitive Democrat on Democrat contest in November, it will encourage Democratic voters to tune in and show up. But a Republican on Democrat race for Senate here in California threatens to depress Democratic turnout, as folks know this is a safe blue seat.

Career politicians shouldn’t get to manipulate the electorate and buy themselves a promotion.”

I started Hopium last March because I thought that we could do something historic in this cycle and get to 55 together. And look at what we’ve done since last March. We took away a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat with 56% of the vote, ending right-wing ideological control of the court in one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. We took away Colorado Springs and Jacksonville, two of the largest Republican held cities in the country. We took away the six week abortion ban in Ohio, getting 57% of the vote there in two elections. We took away the Virginia House, and ended the fantasy that the 15 week abortion could somehow give them an escape hatch from ending Roe. Governor Beshear grew his margin in Kentucky, we gained seats in the New Jersey legislature, and won cities, city council races and school board races all across the US. In 2023, like 2022, we overperformed and won. And they struggled.

And now this same basic dynamic - overperforming and struggling - is showing up in 2024 now too. We took away a critical state House seat in Florida last month, HD-35, Tom Keen.( Note: Rosenberg was the only one to project Dems would win this seat) We took away NY-3 last night, turning an 8 point loss in 2022 to a 8 point win, and outperformed public polls, as we’ve been doing repeatedly since Dobbs. Joe Biden had a higher margin of victory in NH than Trump as a write-in candidate, and got more votes than Trump in Nevada. Our party committees and candidates are outraising Republicans across the US, as we did in 2022. And look at them. Turnout in their Iowa Caucus was anemic despite $100m spent and lots of candidate time. Trump only received 56,000 votes of the 750,000 registered Republicans there - big yikes stuff. The heir apparent, DeSantis, flamed out, spectacularly. Trump underperformed public polls in NH by 10-15 points. Polling in these early states showed a very large number of Republicans very worried about Trump and willing to vote for Biden. The RNC is broke, and broken. State Republican Parties in the battlegrounds have atrophied under MAGA extremist leadership. Dozens of prominent Republican Party leaders in the states have been indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election, many more are under investigation. GOP Party Chairs in Arizona and Florida just resigned due to epic scandals. Ugly MAGA candidates are winning primaries again. They tossed their Speaker. The new one is a coward and a traitorous fool. Trump’s putting his family in charge of the RNC. We keep overperforming and winning. They keep struggling.

MAGA is a failed politics. It lost in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023, and is losing 2024. And this struggle Republicans have seen could get worse for them in the coming months. Their nominee is far weaker than 2020. He is campaigning from the court house not the White House this time. He is far more degraded, extreme, dangerous. His performance on the stump more unhinged, erratic, distributing. Because of his decline and uncontrolled impulsivity, he is making huge traditional political errors - like coming out against the ACA - that cause candidates to lose elections all the time.
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I think we are going to win the Presidential election in November. We should flip the House, and if we work really hard we should keep the Senate. The Democratic Party is a force for good in America and the world, Joe Biden is a good President and we are far better off today. We have a very strong case for re-election and the President will be laying out his agenda for his second term in the coming weeks. We keep winning elections of all kinds, all across the country, over many years now. And they are the worst group of political leaders our history. No one has deserved to get their asses kicked more than these cowardly betrayers of everything that has made America great. We should keep winning, and they should keep struggling.