Analysis: It Has Been A Very Bad Week of Polling for Trump and the GOP
Analysis: A Very Bad Week of Polling for Trump and the GOP
Every week NDN publishes its 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 is also now holding in depth discussions about the 2020 Election every Wednesday at 2pm ET – join us and feel free to invite others too.
We’ve seen many new polls over the past week and there was a remarkable s amount of bad news in them for Trump and McConnell. The bottom line right now is that the various strategies the GOP have employed to change the trajectory of an election they are losing haven’t worked, and there is evidence that their already weakened position may be eroding further.
Some key takeaways from recent polling:
Biden’s lead remains sturdy, no signs of upward movement for Trump/GOP Senate– Despite two big potentially race altering events – the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice and domestic unrest – Biden retains a very durable and significant lead and the Senate would likely flip to the Democrats. GOP running out of time, and have no clear mechanism or set of issues, to turn things around.
Trump saw meaningful erosion in the battleground states – New polls showed Biden tied or even leading in IA and OH, two states which were not part of the Biden target list and where they had not been advertising (the shift in these two states is the biggest news of the week). Two new polls out in the last 24 hours have Biden up 9 in PA. A Fox poll had Biden up 11 in Nevada, a state where there had not been much polling. New polls showed Biden leading in ME-2 and NE-2, districts Trump won in 2016. An Atlanta Journal Constitution poll had GA tied at 47-47, and a new high quality poll in Alaska had Trump only ahead by a new single point, 47-46 (all polls mentioned in this memo can be found on FiveThirtyEight).
Given how late it is, given Biden’s financial advantage and his sizeable lead, that Trump is seeing erosion in the battleground in places where Biden wasn’t advertising is an ominous development for the President’s campaign. The polling in MI, MN, PA, WI this past week suggests that none of them may be competitive – which is the whole ball game. If Biden wins those 4 states he wins the election.
The Senate– there just isn’t any good news for the GOP here. New polls suggest Alaska and South Carolina really may be competitive. Iowa’s trending towards Biden is a bad development for an already struggling Senator Ernst. The nomination of Judge Coney Barrows looks like really bad news for Maine’s Susan Collins, a state Biden has a double digit lead in now. And fundraising for the Democrats in the days after Coney Barrow’s nomination has exploded. If there was any movement this week in the Senate it was towards the Democrats, and as we’ve argued before, we think if the election were held today the Senate would flip.
GOP very clearly in the minority now –57% of the country is not with the President now. Most Senate Republican incumbents have 55-59% of their voters not with them. On issue after issue – COVID, health care, the protests, who caused the recession, should the Senate wait to move ahead on SCOTUS to the next President – 55-61% of the country is not with the GOP position. It is hard to look at all of the polling we see now and not conclude that at least 55% of the US is just not available any longer to Trump and the GOP – and it could actually be higher. Their only hope is Trump’s decent showing on the economy – something we’ve argued Biden can and should be able to take away in the days ahead.
As we wrote last week, we think the GOP’s choice of ending the election with the appointment of Coney Barrows, a very vivid reminder of their treachery and radicalism, was a very bad electoral decision. At a time when the country has decided to give the Republicans less power there is little chance for them being rewarded by seizing more of it in such an illicit manner.
Trump has developed a serious young voter problem– NDN released a new comprehensive analysis of young voters last week. Recent polling shows a huge swing against Trump here, and among the highest levels of vote intent ever recorded. In 2016 Clinton won 18-29 year olds 55-36, +19. In a series of good polls that margin this year is 33-38 points, a shift, depending on final turnout, of 5-6m votes and 2-3% points in national polling. It’s a huge 2020 development.
