Biden

Thursday Poll Roundup – It's Bad Now for Trump/GOP, But It Could Get Worse

A new NYT/Siena poll confirms the central argument of our last Poll Roundup – to make the race competitive Trump is going to have to get up to 48.5/49, a place he’s never really been, and a place that just seems out for reach of him now.

Trump received 46% of the vote in 2016, and 44.8% in 2018. According to 538 Trump’s job approval has only been over 46% for a few days in his entire Presidency (his first week in the job), and most of the time it’s lived in the low 40s. He’s down in this race by about 10 points which would put the final margin at 55-45 – a familiar place for him, 44/45/46. Trump’s only got to 46% in 2016 with the extraordinary help of a massive Russian effort, and the Comey letter, and as this 538 analysis shows Trump was only at 46% for a very brief window in those final weeks. It was not a place he had sustained for a long period of time.

The big question on the table - is there any reason to believe that Trump can break beyond the percentage of the vote he’s been hovering at for this entire time on the national stage – 44/45/46? It matters for this time, without a third party candidate, he has to get up much higher, 48/49, to have a shot at winning the Electoral College. Our analysis last week using 538’s numbers showed that given current battleground state polling Trump would have to get 48.5/49 to have a shot at winning the Electoral College, and it is very likely he would have to get to 50% to lock it down. The NYT/Siena poll has similar findings. Looking at their battleground state polling, Trump would have to turn a 50/36 race into a three point race, 51.5/48.5, to have a shot at winning the EC. To assure his win he would have to go higher, 49, 49.5, 50. As the NYT’s Nate Cohn writes this morning: “And at the moment, there are limits to what Trump can hope to extract out of the electorate right now. 55% of registered voters said there was "almost no chance" they would support him.” There is that Trump at 44/45/46 number again. Winning the election will require Trump to win 3-4 pts in the electorate he has never had – meaning that to win now Trump has to keep everyone who voted for him in 2016/8 and pick up millions of new voters he’s never had. Yikes to that.

As bad as the race is now for Trump and the GOP, there are three ways it could get worse in the months ahead:

Biden still has room to grow – Biden has not yet picked his VP or formally won the nomination. It is very possible these events, coming soon, would allow him to pick up another 2-3 pts nationally. If his vote share starts to consistently hit 52/53/54, not the 49/50 number he is at now, he will start putting the race away. Keep in mind that in this NYT poll Trump was at 36%, meaning that 64% of the electorate was not supporting him. If that holds, Biden’s upper limit may not be in the mid 50s but in the high 50s. 

COVID – the clear failure of the Trumpian re-open fast strategy may have a significant impact on the fall election. It may not only reinforce broader Trump failures, making any future political recovery for him more challenging, but if it erodes the GOP brand by even 2-3 points in the states heavily impacted right now – AZ, FL, TX and potentially IA and SC – it would make the Electoral College and holding the Senate that much harder for the GOP. A 2-3 point shift in AZ and FL would almost certainly put those two must win states out of play for Trump. Given how close Texas is now a 2-3 pt shift could end up flipping Texas, which has not only would be an EC disaster for the GOP, but a redistricting one as well. 

Young Voters – In 2018 Democrats won younger Americans by enormous margins - +25 for under 45s, +35 for under 30s. Recent Trump job approval measures had suggested that this margin was holding, or even getting worse for Trump. The NYT/Siena poll has some pretty startling findings in this area – 

18-29 Biden 60 Trump 26 +34, 15% undecided/not voting

30-44 Biden 56 Trump 24 +32, 20% undecided/not voting

This would put the under 45 vote at +33 for Biden (OMG), and Trump at 25% (!!!!) with this portion of the electorate (which will make up around 45% of the total vote in 2020). But what should worry the GOP here is if this large uncertain vote that breaks along these current lines, going basically 70/30 for Biden, it will give the former VP another 2-3 points nationally on election day.

For an extended discussion of the under 45 vote do watch my new video presentation, “With Democrats Things Get Better.” It does a deep dive into this critical vote in recent elections.

Things are bad now for Trump, McConnell, and the GOP. But they could get worse in the days ahead. 

NDN is excited to release the first public version of our new deck, "With Democrats Things Get Better." It was recorded on June 24th, 2020 so all of the data you see will be current as of then.  The presentation, narrated by NDN's Simon Rosenberg, lasts about 25 minutes, and there is another 35 minutes of questions and discussion if you are interested.   

You can learn more about the thinking behind "With Democrats" here.

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. 

Thursday Poll Roundup – Trump’s Emerging Electoral College Challenge

The big trends we’ve been writing about of late – the across the board weakness of the GOP brand – is still very evident this week: 

Biden/Trump      50.2/41.7   + 8.5   Real Clear Politics

Dem/Rep            48.6/40.7   +7.9   538 Congressional Generic

Trump                 41.6/55.1    -13.5 538 Trump Job Approval (Registered/Likely Voters)

Senate polling continues to bleak for the Rs, with none of their incumbents in the 11 seats  they are defending (AZ, CO, GA/2, IA, KS, KY, ME, MT, NC, SC) holding a clear lead at this point.  New polls have Greenfield leading Ernst 46-43 in IA, Ossof leading Purdue 45-44 in GA, Kelly leading McSally 51-42 in AZ and Peters leading James in MI 47-35.  With Democrats holding consistent leads in AZ, CO, IA, ME, NC the Senate looks very much within Senator Schumer’s grasp this year.  

What should be worrisome to Republicans now is the growing evidence that the President is no longer strong enough to win essential arguments with the public.  This trend manifested earlier this year during the Impeachment debate, where on most aspects of the elements of Impeachment – Democrats handling it fairly, witnesses/documents, etc – the President lost the argument, sometimes by very large margins.  We are seeing that now with his handling of COVID, the protests and police violence – all of these issues are breaking dramatically from the President’s stated positions.  A recent poll by the Washington Post put the President’s approval of handling the protests at 35/61, and then there is this data from this morning’s excellent Corona Navigator: 

Support the protests   66/29

Approve of police response 37/50

Black Lives Matter Fav/Unfav  65/29

Trump COVID Approval  42/57

Over the course of these defining 2020 issues – Impeachment, COVID, the protests – it is common to find the President and his positions in the 20s and 30s, rarely in the low 40s and never in the 50s.  This data, consistent in poll after poll, suggests the President is becoming a spent force, unable to bend and shape the national political environment in a way required for him to win this year.  

Finally, we are starting to get enough high quality polls in the states to get a sense of how the Electoral College is looking.  Using 538’s latest averages, with the race today between +8.5 to 9 pts for Biden, and giving Trump both IA and TX, today it is Biden 368 Electoral College votes, Trump 170 Let’s look at what happens if we tighten the race

Biden/Trump 53/47 (+6) – Trump gets to 219 (GA, NC, OH flip to Trump) 

Biden/Trump 52/48 (+4) – Trump to 230 (AZ flips to Trump)

Biden/Trump 51.5/48.5 (+3) – Trump to 250 (PA flips to Trump) 

Biden/Trump 51/49 (+2) – Trump to 260, maybe 289 (MN, maybe FL flip to Trump).  

Biden/Trump 50.5/49.5 (+1) – Trump to 293 (FL, NH flip to Trump)

 In 2016 Trump got 46% of the vote, and in a high turnout midterm in 2018, Trump/GOP received 44.8%.  For Trump to make this race competitive at this point he will have to make it a 2 point race and get all the way up to 49%, 3-4 pts higher than he was in the last two elections.  This would require him to gain millions of votes from people who have not voted for him before, even if he retained everyone who had voted for him and the GOP in the last two elections.  With historically high unemployment and deficits, COVID untamed, a President seemingly lost in a new and changing environment, a sure footed and smart Biden campaign, what do we really believe the chances of that kind of comeback are this year? 

Spend time with the 538 job approval tracker.  You will find that Trump has only been about 45/46 job approval with likely and registered voters for a day or two in his entire Presidency.  So to make the election competitive in this scenario, Trump will have to get to a job approval level that he has only had for a day or two in the last 3 ½ years, and a level of electoral support he has never come close to.  

These early state polls will change of course, as will the national landscape.  But part of what has made the Electoral College far more daunting for Trump than it was a few months ago is what appears to be significant recent slippage in FL and WI.  If those states remain where they are relative to the other states, this race is going to be very very hard for the President this year.   

We are excited to report to you that our new presentation, “With Democrats Things Get Better,” is the subject of a new Daily Beast column by noted author Mike Tomasky (for those who would like to see the presentation you find the dates of future showings and register here).

Tomasky writes: “Simon Rosenberg heads NDN, a liberal think tank and advocacy organization. He has spent years advising Democrats, presidents included, on how to talk about economic matters. Not long ago, he put together a little PowerPoint deck. It is fascinating. You need to know about it. The entire country needs to know about it.

The presentation compares how the economy has performed by various measures under Democratic and Republican administrations, going back to 1989. That means that it fairly compares 16 years of Democratic presidencies (Clinton and Obama) to 16 (almost) years of Republican presidencies (Bush, Bush, and Trump). It uses official government numbers, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and so forth. There’s no cooking of any numbers. It’s just the facts.

And the facts are that it’s not even close. The economy does better—far better—when we have Democratic presidents. In terms of job creation, median income, health care, and yep, even the stock market, the economy does better—the American people do better—under Democratic presidents. By a mile.

“We’ve been making a version of this ‘Dems good, Reps not-so-much’ argument for a few years now, but decided to really lean into this year because the magnitude of Trump’s failures has just made the contrast that much more stark, and even more essential for Democrats to establish,” Rosenberg told me. Amen to that.”

Tomasky goes on to review some of the key slides and arguments from the deck, adding his own insights and observations.  Do read it all – it is a terrific and smart piece, and register for one of our future showings. Our next three will take place on Wednesday, June 24th, July 8th, and July 22nd. We are proud of this deck and are working hard to bring it to as many people we can in the months ahead. 

A big shout out to former NDNer Chris Taylor who contributed significantly to the deck, and current NDNer Georgia McLean who has worked hard these last few weeks keeping it current. Chris who did so much good work for us is now working on the staff of the very able Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, and we are sure he's helping out that great office as much as did ours.

The data doesn’t lie. COVID here in the US, never tamed, is spreading again at too fast a rate in too many states for the US govt to pretend it isn’t happening or for it not to act. Because the federal government has done so little to combat COVID (allowing us to have infection rates up there with exemplars Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Sweden), there is much the President could do now to help the country re-open safely – support a national testing and tracing regime, start a big conversation about the need to mask and physically distance, challenge America’s young people to do their part and avoid risky behavior all would be a good place to start.  Our strategy for combatting COVID has failed; the cost to the US in lives, jobs, and our well-being has been immense; it is time now for the President to recognize the magnitude of his failure and course correct.

For all the early mistakes the President made, the most significant mistake he may have made has come in recent days – urging the country to re-open without having the proper tools and protocols in place to lessen the chance of a new surge. The President has time now to correct that mistake and stop asking the entire country to, in essence, sign a waiver absolving him for responsibility for what is happening. The easiest way to do this is for the President and his team to lead a conversation with the American people about the need to maintain physical distancing and mask. These are inexpensive solutions which if widely deployed, could do a great deal to contain the virus and allow us to live “new normal” lives without returning to lockdowns. The President’s attacks on masking and prudent measures by the states have been dangerous, profoundly stupid, and reckless. 

What remains so hard to understand is that with the President and his party seeing truly ruinous 2020 polling numbers, why isn’t the President changing course on COVID? He has clear evidence that the GOP governors who’ve been tough on COVID saw their job approval numbers skyrocket. He has a smart, clear, and well-trodden path to follow. Why, for the good of the nation and for his party, won’t he follow it?

At this point, given the very carnage we’ve seen, and the collapse of the GOP’s brand this spring, we are running out of charitable explanations for the President’s refusal to mount a national campaign to tame COVID. One should note the contrast of the President’s recent intense mobilization of the US military and other federal resources to combat a “terror threat" which didn’t exist to his dogged refusal to mount such an effort to combat the virus. The President didn’t leave our economic response to COVID to the states, or the response to his invented terror threat. Why he thinks it isn’t the responsibility of the federal government to lead a response to a pandemic which affects every American will be the stuff of discussions, books and seminars for a very long time – for it may be the single most destructive set of governing decisions in all of American history.   

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. 

Short entry today as the trends we are seeing this week are continuations of ones we discussed at length in our last two Thursday Roundups (here and here). Bottom line - five months out, the numbers for the President and the GOP incumbents in the Senate are about as bad as they can be. A few nuggets from new polling this week that stood out: 

Big Biden Numbers - Biden up 12 in Michigan, 9 in Wisconsin, 4 in North Carolina, 2 in Ohio, Texas and Iowa tied. In 2016 Trump won Ohio by 8.6, Iowa by 9.6 and Texas by 9.2, 

Biden up 14 in new CNN poll (55/41), which interestingly almost exactly tracks 538's Trump job approval aggregate, which today stands at 41.8/55, minus 13.2. 

More Bad Senate News for McConnell – In a new poll taken by a right leaning firm, Leader McConnell trails Amy McGrath in Kentucky 40-41. Using publically available polls no Republican Senate incumbent in any of these 11 GOP held seats - AZ, CO, GA (2), IA, KS, KY, ME, MT, NC, SC - has a definitive lead, and none has a recent public poll showing them above 45. As of today, all 11 of these seats may be in play – an incredible 2020 development. 

The Protestors Are Winning the Argument - We touched on this in our Tuesday email, but there has been a dramatic shift in America over the past few weeks on attitudes towards race and policing. Review these analyses from the NYTimes and the WaPo for more, and we will be tracking these developments closely in the days ahead. 

In the coming weeks, we are going to return to some of the demographic and political analysis NDN is well known for, and share some of our recent work below to whet your appetite a bit. Pay particular attention to the reports below on the under 45 vote, and the accelerating deterioration of the GOP brand in the heavily Mexican-American parts of this US. 

On Wednesdays, be sure to catch our weekly look via Zoom at the 2020 elections and US politics. We do it every week at 2 pm ET, with alternating topics each week. The data is always fresh and current, so if you join us each week, you will always learn something new.

2020 Background Analyses

Americans Under 45 Are Breaking Hard Toward The Democrats - And For Good Reason- Among the most significant political developments of the Trump era is the dramatic shift of under 45 year old voters towards the Democrats. From 2000 to 2016, D margin w/under 45s was 6 points. In 2018 it was 25. 

Dems Have Already Won Back Voters In The Rust Belt. It's Trump Who Needs To Win Them Back Now- It is a myth that Trump's anti-immigrant and protectionist policies have made it difficult for Democrats to win in the Rust Belt in 2020. Trump is trailing badly there now raising questions about Trumpism itself has become a grand failure. 

Notes On The GOP's Erosion In The Southwest- The dramatic erosion of the GOP brand in the heavily Mexican-American parts of the country over the past two elections is one of the biggest stories in American politics. Trump's border extremism has cost the GOP dearly, and it hasn't kept the industrial north from slipping away. 

In All Important Florida, Democrats Lost Ground With Hispanic Voters- In a year when Democrats made gains with Hispanics across the nation, Florida Democrats saw their performance with Hispanics decline. Work has to be done to figure out why. 

$38 Million For Beto, And Why It Matters- Democrats have been raising a lot of money this cycle. This is not just about fear of Trump - it is about the broad adoption of a more authentic people based politics suited for the digital age championed by Dean, Obama, and yes, even Trump himself.

Out of Tragedy, Hope – This has been an extraordinarily challenging and bitter time for America – a President impeached (and clearly guilty), the ravages of COVID19, Great Depression level job loss, repeated racial violence, protests marred by what DHS has been calling “violent opportunists,” and a shocking overreaction by the White House and law enforcement across the country.  It has been numbing, hard, an incredible period of struggle for so many. 

Then came this weekend, and somehow some of these spontaneous protests, born from such grief and pain, became joyous, warm, hopeful.  You could feel it in the air on Saturday walking along that big yellow Black Lives Matter mural painted on 16th street here in DC by Mayor Bowser.  You could see and feel it in the dancing, the peaceful crowds, the kids atop their parents’ shoulders, the pleasure of being around others after months and months apart.  Something changed in America these last few days. Bitterness, at least for now, was ceding to something more hopeful. 

New polling suggests things have indeed changed in recent days, and that those protesting are winning the argument with the President.  Clear majorities support the protests and are worried about police violence and systemic racism.  Concerns about looting and violence remain, as they should, but it is not hard to be for the protestors, upset at the police and White House violence and against the looting we saw.  The violent reaction we’ve seen from authorities to protests over exactly this kind of violence has helped push the American people into an unprecedented place on race and reforming law enforcement, as did, apprently, the experience of an overwelming majority of people who found the protests in their own areas of the country peaceful. 

Recent polling also continues to show that the public is very unhappy with how the President has handled both COVID and the protests, and together these governing and moral failures have taken a huge toll on the party of Trump and Mitch.  On Thursday we published a detailed review of just how bad the GOP’s numbers are now in both the Presidential race and swing Senate seats.  Since then the President’s numbers have continued to slide, and he is now in one of the worst moments of his entire Presidency.  We are starting to see unimaginable numbers show in up in reputable polls  –  Biden up 14 nationwide, 12 in Michigan, 9 in Wisconsin, Trump minus 13 job approval.   All this data suggests the desire to end this bitter, dark period in our history is swelling up into something powerful enough to alter the trajectory of the 2020 election and thus the country itself.

And that is welcome, and hopeful, news indeed.    

This is the seventh piece in NDN's new weekly polling round-up, published every Thursday. You can find previous weeks' analyses here.

NDN's 2020 Polling Roundup - As we’ve written in our recent 2020 Polling Roundups, NDN has never been a subscriber to the Trump has magical powers school of political analysis.  Without the help of Jill Stein, Russia and the Comey Letter, Clinton would have likely beaten Trump by 5-8 points in 2016.  Trump’s job approval has been minus 10 or worse for more days than all other Presidents in their first term combined since polling was invented.  He’s led his party to three consecutive disastrous elections (2017/18/19) and he got himself impeached for trying to cheat in a crude and ridiculous way in the 2020 elections.  This is not the record of a political mastermind.  

The President received only 46% of the vote in 2016 even with lots of help from Russia and the FBI, and his party only got to 44.8% in 2018 losing a very high turn out midterm 44.8 to 52.4 (8.6 pts).  As there will be no third party candidate this time, Trump will have to get to at least 48% to have a shot at winning the Electoral College this year, meaning he’ll  have to win 2-3% pts of the vote he HAS NEVER HAD to be competitive. With civil unrest, Great Depression level unemployment, a still yet quelled pandemic, and Putin lite law and order bluster, is this likely? We don’t think so. 

Let’s look at where things stand five months out from the 2020 election: 

Job Approval – Using 538’s excellent tracker, the President’s job approval is 42.7% favorable, 53.8% unfavorable, -11.1 pts. On Election Day 2018 it was 44/52.4, -8-4, on a day where he was beaten by 8.6 pts.  So the President is significantly lower today than he was in a very high turnout midterm where he only received 44.8% and lost by 8.6 pts. 

Congressional Generic – On Election Day 2016 Democrats led in 538’s Congressional Generic tracker by 1 point, 45/44, and on Election Day 2018 it was 50.7/42.0, almost 9 pts. Today Democrats lead 48.7/40.9, 8 points.  This question – your Congressional preference – suggests the overall structure of the 2020 election is far more hostile to Republicans than in 2016, and remarkably similar to the 2018 outcome.  

Party ID – We tend to put a lot of stock in this number, as it is the answer to the basic question of what Party do you current affiliate with.  We are going to do a bit more work on this in the coming weeks as not every poll reports this number, and it is not tracked the same among all polls.  But today we will use a single poll as a surrogate for an aggregate, one that has been in the middle of the pack of polls recently, the daily GSG/GBAO tracker.  Today it has Party ID at 49% Dem, 41% Republican, 8 pts.  

Trump Biden Head to Heads – Using Real Clear Politics’ tracker, the current average is 49.9% Biden, 42.1% Trump, 7.8 pts.  Two polls, Monmouth and ABC/WaPo had Biden’s lead in the double digits this week.  

The Electoral College – Assuming MI and PA go to Biden, Trump must win all three of the next tier – AZ, FL, WI - to win, while also holding on to all of the next tier – GA, IA, NC, OH, TX.  In recent polling Biden leads in every one of these states except for Iowa and Texas, which are functionally tied.  Fox News polls released yesterday had Biden up by 9 in Wisconsin (!!!!), 4 in Arizona and 2 in Ohio. Trump is far below where he wants to be right now.  

The NYTimes has quite a story today which reports on how Trump world is coming to terms with how badly the election is going for him right now.  And don’t forget that all those elections Dems won in 2018 in these states – from Congress to governorships and in state houses – will make the collective Democratic voice in these states much louder this year, helping blunt the traditionally powerful Trump noise machine.    

The Senate – In our analysis last week we noted that Republicans are not performing well in any of the 10 seats they are defending this cycle.  Most of their incumbents are in the high 30s and low 40s, disaster territory for an incumbent this late in the cycle. The only state where Rs are even hitting 45 now is GA, and in one recent poll Senator Purdue trailed Ossoff, and Senator Loeffler was at 32%! 

As Simon was quoted in the NYTimes: “The Republican brand seems depressed across the board,” Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist and founder of the NDN, said in an interview. “A lot of time senators can insulate themselves from the vagaries of the national electorate, but that doesn’t seem to be happening this time.”

Key Takeaways - So putting all this together we see Republican incumbents for President and Senate now living at 41-42-43, and a margin across many different measures of 7-8-9 for the Democrats.  One can only find a poll or two taken in the past several months where ANY Republican in ANY competitive state is even at 45%.  Trump’s job approval is 42.7; his head to head w/Biden is 42.1; Party ID and Congressional Generic is 41; most incumbent GOP Senators are topping out at 42 right now.  When numbers line up like this, and it is not always the case in elections that they do, a clear structure has developed within the electorate, and that structure, that dynamic is as negative for GOP as any election we here at NDN can remember at this point in an election cycle.  

So for Trump to win he and his Party are going to have to travel from 41-42-43 today to 48-49 in November. That my friends is a very very heavy lift, and it is particularly difficult for what is in essence the incumbent party.  Looking back over the past generation of US politics, you will be hard pressed to find any incumbent in a Federal race who was able to come back and win from 41-42-43 this late in the cycle.  And as we said, we don’t believe that Trump has magical powers, can defy traditional politics physics. He has never broken 46% in a race, and he enters the summer with America more battered and challenged than perhaps in any time in the past 100 years.  

Where this election wants to be today is Biden winning 53-55 to 45-47, and the Senate flipping.  Where it will be five months from now we don’t know, but based on all this data we’ve reviewed with you we believe we are more likely to see a Democratic wave this fall than Republicans holding onto either the Presidency or Senate.    

We believe when we look back at this time in future years, we will view President Trump as having been both an incompetent President and political strategist; incompetent but also very very lucky. 

This is the sixth piece in NDN's new weekly polling round-up, published every Thursday. You can find previous weeks' analyses here.

As we’ve been writing these last few months, the President’s bungling of his COVID response has been both a policy and political failure.  The policy failure is manifest – the US still has among the highest infection rates in the world, up there with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Sweden and the UK; 100,000 are dead; we are 35th in per capita testing; the US economy took a far bigger hit than other developed nations; and at least 10 states are now seeing their hospitalization rates increase. 

What continues to remain hard to understand is how the President has chosen to play his policy disaster politically.  Rather than appearing to learn from his mistakes and course correcting, he’s chosen to question and undermine aspects of our response designed to keep us safe and are popular with voters – masks, smart stay at home efforts, even testing and tracing.  Republican Governors who’ve attacked the virus with force have seen their poll numbers shoot up.  Not Trump – his numbers are dropping to what now has to be seen as a very dangerous place for him.  Using 538’s Trump job approval aggregate with likely and registered voters, the President begins the morning at 42.7% approve/54.0% disapprove (-11.3), among the worst showings of his Presidency.  On Election Day 2018 the 538 tracker had Trump at 44/52.4 (-8.4) and he lost that night in the House races by 44.8/53.4 (-8.6).  He is three points lower today, -11.3, and dropping. 

As I was quoted in the New York Times last Friday saying, what has to concern the national GOP the most right now is that Trump’s poor showing may be creating a dangerously low ceiling for Senate incumbents too.   If the 538 job approval tracker was pretty accurate in picking Trump’s final vote share in 2018, and it’s 42.7 today, let’s assume Trump is sitting at 42-44 now (Real Clear Politics has Trump at 42.4).   Here are the head to head numbers for GOP Senators in public polls released since April 15th via 538 (adding MI Senate GOP challenger James too):

Arizona – 38, 41, 42

Colorado – 31, 31, 36

Iowa – 42, 43

Kansas (Kobach) - 42

Maine – 42, 43

Michigan – 35, 36, 37, 37, 40, 43

Montana - 39

North Carolina – 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 41, 44

South Carolina – 42

Georgia, which has a June 9th primary

Purdue - 45, 45, 46

Collins – 44, 45

Loeffler – 32

Of these 10 GOP held seats (2 in GA), Rs do not have a clear lead in any of them; they only have a few polls showing leads at all; and as we can see there sure does seem to be a very low ceiling for all these Senate Rs this year - the numbers 41, 42, 43 keep showing up again and again.  Incumbents in the low 40s this late in an election cycle seldom win their elections. 

If Biden wins the election, Democrats need to win 4 of what are now 10 competitive GOP Senate seats to flip the Senate.  What we are seeing here, above, are signs of a wave election, consistent across the board depression of one party’s numbers regardless of the experience or talent of the incumbent.  While of course it is too early to know if 2020, like 2018, will be anti-GOP wave, the chances of it are rising significantly now.  While we don’t know if Democrats will win those 4 seats (AZ/CO look good now, IA/ME/NC really promising), the chances of Democrats not just winning 4 but winning 6-7-8 seats is now something that is clearly on the table. 

As we’ve written before, it is impossible to explain what Trump is doing now.  His COVID response has been a governing and political failure.  His refusal to acknowledge it all, and course correct remains ever harder to understand.  Mitch and his colleagues have to be increasingly aware that their captain is steering their ship towards the iceberg.  Let’s see if mutinies begin in the coming days, or if they are all just resigned to living the good life of a retired Senator/lobbyist and have begun talks about the next chapters in their lives.

Notes On 2020 - The President’s defiance on masking is worth us discussing this morning.  The case for masks is a powerful one - they reduce the spread of the virus, are low cost, and are simple.  In poll after poll, support for wearing masks and other prudent physical distancing measures is overwhelming.  In a new Huffington Post poll released last week just on masking, 63% of Americans said the President and other elected officials should wear masks.  Only 7% said no.  So why is the President undermining the use of this powerful and simple tool to help us return to work?

The US government only ever had a few options on what to do about COVID, and what remains extraordinary is that the President to this day has essentially chosen to do none of them.  He could have initiated an early travel ban on China and Europe and, while he eventually adopted partial bans, they came far too late to stop the spread of the virus.  He refused to adopt a national stay at home strategy, leaving it to the states.  He’s refused to set up a national testing and tracing regime, something every other developed country in the world has in place and something that at some point America must do too if we hope to restart domestic and international travel (see this WaPo look at Germany’s tracing regime).  And now he’s undermining the wearing of masks in public.  From a public health standpoint it isn't all that different from recommending folks drink Clorox, or take hydroxychloroquine - it is dangerous quackery. 

It turns out that this lack of really doing anything to fight COVID has left America in rough shape.  We still have among the highest infection rates in the world, per capita, on par with countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil.  We are 35th in the world in per capita testing, and while that number is improving, it is possible the virus has spread here more than any other nation in the world, which means we still lag far behind in testing against the local spread of the virus. The hit our economy and workers have taken is far worse than other developed countries.  Former CDC Chief Scott Gottlieb said this weekend that COVID hospitalization rates are *increasing* in many states, including FL and GA, two of the fastest to re-open.  Fundamentally, the President has failed at job one - taming the virus - at an extraordinary cost to the nation. 

So despite very few states hitting the CDC’s recommended guidelines for re-opening, we are re-opening.  And re-opening means more interactions, more density, and probably for a time, more infections and spread.  Which is why if we are sending people back out into a world where the virus is still active, where our testing and tracing regimes still lag way behind, we should be asking people to wear masks, to protect themselves and others.  It’s simple.  And yet the President is refusing to do it; rather, he is mocking leaders like Joe Biden who are doing the right thing now. 

We are at the point in Trump’s Presidency where we really have to start asking hard questions about whether the President is still capable of understanding what he is doing.  His response to COVID has been among the greatest policy failures in our history.  He isn’t learning from what has gone wrong and making course corrections. He is doing things which seem designed to harm people, spread the virus, and slow our recovery.  And everything he is doing is unpopular.  49 of the 50 governors have higher approval ratings on COVID than the President, with many of the GOP Governors who have been the most aggressive at tackling COVID with the very highest ratings of all.   Only 7% believe he shouldn’t be wearing a mask.  His numbers have dropped in the past few weeks, and he is now well below where he was on Election Day 2018 when he lost that election by 8.6 points.  The Senate also seems to be slipping away from his grasp.  I was quoted in a smart NYTimes Senate analysis on Friday, saying  “The Republican brand seems depressed across the board.  A lot of time senators can insulate themselves from the vagaries of the national electorate, but that doesn’t seem to be happening this time. “

Also on Friday, referring to a new piece I'd written, the Washington Post wrote: “Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg urges his party to see Trump not as someone who possesses fearsome magical political powers, but as someone who’s losing, desperate and panicking.” 

If I were Mitch McConnell and House Leader McCarthy, I would do one thing now for the good of their party and the country - get the President to put on a damn mask, and ask everyone else in the country to join him in the days ahead.  The Republicans just have to stop being cowards, and step in here and help our great country tame this virus in the days ahead.   This war against masks, given all of Trump’s other failures, is dangerous anti-science lunacy, and the cries for it to end should be coming from all quarters now, with the loudest of all coming from the office of Mitch McConnell.  

May 27th Update - New polling from the Navigating Coronavirus project show how little support there is for Trump's hostility to masking - 78% want elected official to wear masks, 74% say they are "pro-mask" and 65% disapprove of the President for not wearing a mask.