Analysis: Should Dems Go For It?
Every Thursday NDN publishes its Thursday Poll Roundup, a deep dive into recent polling and political trends. You can sign up to receive it each week and feel free to review previous editions too. NDN’s Simon Rosenberg also does a regular Wednesday webinar on national polling trends – learn more, sign up here.
Thursday Poll Roundup – Should Dems Go For It?
Top lines – Polls this week show no great change from the basic structure of what’ve been seeing over the past few weeks – Biden is up by 8-10 points, Congressional Generic is 9, Trump job approval is -15, battleground states moving toward Biden, and Dems continue to outperform GOP Senate incumbents in AZ, CO, IA, ME, MT, NC – enough to flip the Senate. Early Q2 Senate Dem fundraising numbers show extraordinary, unprecedented hauls, meaning the Dem challengers will have enough money to tell their own stories, in their own words – as Dem candidates did so effectively in the 2018 cycle.
Should Dems Go For It? A new Politico story about the Dems and 2020 has this passage:
"Simon Rosenberg, who worked as a senior consultant for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018, when the party swamped Republicans en route to the House majority, said the environment is just as ripe this year.
“The rationale for going big is clear: it can help flip the Senate, create a more powerful mandate for governing, and lock in wins for the coming reapportionment,” he said. “From a governing and party perspective, there will be a powerful case for going big, and trying to get to 400-plus Electoral College votes.” "
Targeting – choosing the strategy for how you win an election – is one of the most important parts of any campaign. Like anything involving strategy, the process of choosing targets must be data driven; and changes to that strategy, which always arise, must also be driven by data and the new campaign art of “analytics.” There is no right way or wrong way – just making calls based on what the data is telling you, and making adjustments as things change.
In 2018, the DCCC knew from its research that there were far many more seats available to us than there had been in previous elections, and the Committee, led by Rep. Ben Ray Lujan and Exec Director Dan Sena, made the decision to go for it, playing in 70 plus districts. Democrats ended up picking 40 seats, the very upper end of what was possible, winning many more seats than most experts predicted. With investment, well run campaigns, and good candidates, Democrats expanded the battlefield, which also had the advantage of spreading the GOP tactically thin and lessening their traditional advantage in fundraising.
In politics, like life, you can’t score unless you shoot – and sometimes losing comes as much from not attempting or understanding how to win as it does from the other side beating you. In 2018 the DCCC took lots of shots and it paid off.
To us, the choice the Biden campaign has to make whether to go big and expand the map is similar to what the DCCC’s team was looking at in 2018. Reach states like GA, IA, NC, TX (and maybe OH) are in play, and if there is enough money, investment, smart campaigns in those states these states can be won by the Biden campaign. We are skeptical at this point that the presidential race is going to tighten up – the structure we discuss above wants this to be an 8-10 point race, where it is now. Trump won 46% in 2016 and 44.8% in 2018 and has never shown the ability to crash through that very low ceiling. 45-46 puts the race at 8-10 pts. 8-10 pts means GA, IA, NC, TX are in play.
The upside Dems are looking at by expanding the map and going for it is significant. Investing in those states and winning there helps the Senate flip; provides a deeper and broader governing mandate for President Biden; and locks in these gains for the all-important re-apportionment to come after this cycle. This is a very big upside indeed.
Fighting for GA, IA, NC, TX (and maybe OH) doesn’t mean abandoning the core battleground states of AZ, FL, MI, PA, WI (and NH, NV to a lesser extent). The Biden campaign has a very experienced Presidential crew leading it and has been impressively sure-footed these last few months. They know what they are doing, and are agile enough to shift their strategy if the race does indeed tighten, protecting their leads in the core battlegrounds. But the data today sure suggests like 2018 Team Biden should expand the map and go for it – the upside for everything Democrats care about and have fought for is immense.
