Can You Make Calls for Rudy Salas This Weekend? Notes On The NYT Poll, Why I Am Optimistic

Welcome New Subscribers!/The State Of The Union Is Thursday - Make Your Plans To Watch

Happy Saturday everyone! Happily, have spent most of the day at my daughter’s lacrosse tournament, so this one is a little late, and will be lighter than usual:

Rudy Salas, CA-22, Can You Use Your Help - Turnout in one of our top House pick-up opportunities, CA-22, is a little light for this Tuesday’s primary, and the campaign has put out a call to see if folks in the Hopium community can pitch in with some calls over the next few days. If interested click here for more info.

In California the top two vote-getters in the primary, regardless of party, move on to the general election. While things look good to get Rudy into the general we are making one final push. Former Speaker Pelosi is with the Salas phone bank team right now, and other political stars will be joining throughout the weekend. If you can grab a shift, even for an hour, it will be really helpful. Thanks, everyone!

It’s A Close, Competitive Election - Yes, the NYT released a poll today that has Trump ahead. Some initial thoughts:

Lots of other polls show the race even, competitive - Three national polls released this week (below) have the race even. 538’s Congressional Generic tracker is tied, 44%-44%. A new battleground state poll produced by top Democratic pollsters has Trump and Biden tied at 40%. Another battleground state poll that hasn’t been released yet that I was just briefed on has it 41%-39% Trump, essentially the same results. Senate polling is slightly better for us than for Republicans right now.

The Times poll has Trump leading among likely voters by 4 points, 48%-44%. This is a gain of 6 points for Trump since the December Times poll. None of these other polls have found a GOP surge of this magnitude or even a GOP lead. So the NYT results are not confirmed in lots of other recent polling which finds the race close and competitive, which is where I think it is now.

• Biden 36% Trump 36% - AP/IPSOS

• Biden 44% Trump 44% - Economist/YouGov

• Biden 43% Trump 44% - Morning Consult (Biden’s gained 4 pts in recent weeks in this poll)

There are problems with the NYT poll - It has Trump winning both Hispanics and women - an impossibility. It’s likely voter electorate is +3 Republican - something we haven’t seen in a general election in actual voting in 20 years, and only once in the last 8 Presidential elections going all the way back to 1992. In the last 4 Presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51%, Republicans 46%, and we gained ground in the 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023 elections. After all these years of strong Democratic vote performance for the electorate to become +3 Republican this year is, um, unlikely. Overestimating their intensity and strength and underestimating ours was a central reason so many saw the red wave that never came in 2022.

The poll has almost twice as many rural voters in its sample as was the case in the 2020 election. It has Trump winning all his 2020 voters, and keeping his party unified - something that is not happening either in the actual voting or polling in the early states. It has Dean Phillips at 10% in the Dem primary against Biden. In Michigan this week he got 2.5%, and came in behind Marianne Williamson who dropped out of the race a month ago.

The poll’s initial likely voter sample was 29% Dem, 28% Republican and was “weighted” through a complex formula to become 32% R and 29% D. That’s a shift of 4 percentage points, something that would take an even race and make it +4 R, as this poll finds.

The poll has Biden winning Democrats 90%-7%, Trump winning Republicans 91%-6%, and Biden winning Independents 45%-41%. These results would normally produce a Biden lead but with the aggressive weighting and a very Republican sample, it produces a 4 point Trump lead.

The poll only interviewed 980 people, which is a relatively small sample for such an influential poll. Its margin of error is 3.5% for registered voters and almost 4% for likely voters. The sub-samples have margin of errors in double digits.

I want to thank my friends Tom Bonier and Joe Trippi for their help in putting together this quick analysis.

The Biden campaign’s statement - “Polling continues to be at odds with how Americans vote, and consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating President Biden. Whether it’s in special elections or in the presidential primaries, actual voter behavior tells us a lot more than any poll does and it tells a very clear story: Joe Biden and Democrats continue to outperform while Donald Trump and the party he leads are weak, cash-strapped, and deeply divided. Our campaign is ignoring the noise and running a strong campaign to win - just like we did in 2020.”

Why I’m Optimistic About Winning This November - A round up of recent postings, essays and appearances. Lots to chew on her over the weekend:

Hopium Analysis/Us - Democrats Really Like Their President, Biden Breaks 80% in Michigan, Trump Continues To Struggle, Biden’s Successful Presidency Is Leaving Rs With Nothing To Run On, Moving On From The Trump Trials

Biden’s Chances Are Much Stronger Than People Realize (MSNBC), 4 Things Biden Should Do Now (New Republic)

Hopium Analysis/Them - More Performance Problems For Trump and MAGA in South Carolina, Trump Is Not Strong, Or Winning - No Red Waving 2024 Please, Coming To Terms With Russia’s Penetration of Trump and The GOP, MAGA Descends Into Madness

Hopium Events/Appearances - Our Monthly Hopium Gathering With Special Guest Tom Suozzi, With Democrats, Things Get Better

Appearances - PoliticsGirl, MeidasTouch, Daily Kos’ The Brief and The Ezra Klein Show

The Most Powerful Democratic Political Machine We’ve Ever Seen - Read my recent post on the powerful political machine we building together, and let’s just keep staring at this jaw-dropping data from the Suozzi campaign:

In the space of five weeks people knocked on over 150,000 doors, made over 2 million phone calls, and wrote hundreds of thousands of postcards. Our campaign estimates that every Democrat household in the NY-03 received, on average, five handwritten postcards.

Here’s my discussion with Ben and Brett Meiselas from MeidasTouch about Joe Biden’s strong showing in Michigan, and Trump’s ongoing political struggles. This one if worth your time.

March Event Dates - Three events on the books so far in March:

• Wed, March 6, 7pm EST - Hopium Paid Subscriber Monthly Gathering - Register

• Thur, March 7th - State Of The Union Address - Be Sure to Watch!!!!!

• Wed March 13, 7pm EST - Hopium Community-Wide Monthly Gathering - Register

Free subscribers can upgrade their membership to join these additional gatherings by clicking here.

Let’s Do More, Worry Less - Here at Hopium we strive to channel all this worry and anxiety we have about our current moment into concrete action - do more, worry less - as we say here. I try to give you a bit of direction about where to channel your work by endorsing campaigns and projects, and providing you information to help you become a more effective information warrior for your democracy. Together we just made a big difference in NY-3, and if you are looking for ways to help right now here are a few things beyond making calls for Rudy Salas you can do today:

Donate and join the Biden-Harris campaign - This is very important. The campaign comms and field operations are gearing up and it’s critical you receive info from the campaign every day, and start thinking about how you are going to be part of this effort as it expands. Please donate whatever amount you can - $5, $10 - just to get started.

Our community has already raised over $85,000 for Biden Harris - thank you!

Make an early investment in North Carolina - North Carolina is our most important 2024 expansion state. Please consider donating today. For more on why I think North Carolina is so important watch my interview with Anderson Clayton, the dynamic new NC Democratic Party Chair.

Our community has already raised $76,000 for this critical battleground - thank you all!

Thank Joe Biden For Being A Good President - As we get ready for the big State Of The Union address next Thursday, our friends at Markers for Democracy have launched an inspired campaign to send post cards to Joe Biden thanking him for being a good President. Our friends Ellen Bender and Susan Wagner sent this to note to me:

In this moment of media fixation over President Biden (see,e.g.,@ezraklein) the postcard community is turning our Sharpies to a very special campaign:  Markers For Democracy has launched a campaign #postcardstobiden encouraging people to send the President a postcard expressing the fact that he has been an excellent President, you appreciate what he has done for the country and you want him to serve a second term. Please encourage others to do the same. Feel free to use your own language and send a postcard letting the President know you have his back.  Postcards should be addressed to President Biden at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500

You can learn more about the amazing work Postcards for Democracy does here; and you can order cards at their pro-shop or by going to Etsy and search "postcards to voters”. Catch James Carville talking about the importance of postcarding on his podcast, minute 9, and below are some examples of cards that have already gone to President Biden in recent days. For all of you who are involved in organizations across the US please consider adopting this campaign. Let’s let the big guy know how grateful we are for his leadership in a time of enormous challenge, and how excited we are to help him win a second term.

Spread Hopium - Encourage people in your networks to become a Hopium subscriber. Our goal is to get to 50,000 subscribers by March 31st (we are at 45,000 today). With your help, we can hit our goal, grow our community, and bring the upbeat, data-filled analysis here to more and more people.

Keep working hard all. So proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon