Friday Poll and Data Roundup - Abortion and Treason

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Friends, always getting questions about polls, so I shared some of what I’m seeing below. Happy Friday all!

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Friday Poll and Data Roundup - I’ve been a little slow to write about polls. It’s really early, it’s summer, and there haven’t been a lot of high-quality polls to write about. Most of the polling is about the GOP primary, and it all tells the same story - Trump has a commanding lead, and DeSantis has collapsed. Look at this graph from 538:

To me, right now the most important electoral data out there is:

• Democrats have averaged 51% of the vote over the last 4 Presidential elections, our best showing over 4 elections since FDR’s Presidency.

• Democrats have won more votes in 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections, the best popular vote run of any political party in US history.

• In a “red wave” year, 2022, Democrats gained ground from 2020 in 7 key battlegrounds: AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA. We also picked up 4 state legislative chambers, 2 governorships and 1 US Senate seat. As we’ve written 2022 was not a single nationalized election, but really two elections - a bluer election in the battleground where we gained, and a redder election outside where we did not. We’ve seen this strong Dem performance continue into 2023 with impressive wins in CO, FL, OH, PA and WI.

• Democrats are having their best run in the Southwest since the 1940s and 50s. In 2004 Bush won AZ, CO, NM, NV, Rs controlled 5 of their 8 Senate seats, 14 of their 21 House seats. In 2020 Biden was the 1st Democratic to win those 4 states since FDR, and today Rs control none of those 8 Senate seats and we control 14 of 23 House seats there.

But, okay. Let’s get to some polling. While a lot of polling this past week finds the Biden-Trump match close, I am okay with where we are. Their base is fully engaged - they have a loud and noisy primary on, Trump’s legal woes have caused a rallying around him, Fox News is doing its thing. Our base is not yet engaged in the Presidential. There is no primary, no re-election campaign yet. So my guess is that over the next few months as Biden turns on his campaign and Trump becomes the Republican nominee, our coalition will engage, and Biden’s numbers will get a bit of a bump. Where we have engaged in 2023 - CO, FL, OH, PA and WI - we’ve kicked ass.

Here is the recent polling for Biden-Trump (via 538):

• YouGov/Economist 43-42

• Marist 47-46

• Beacon/Fox 44-41

• Quinnipiac 47-46

• Morning Consult 43-41

• Cygnal 46-43

• Noble 44-41

• Siena/NYT 43-43

Averaged together that’s a 2 point Biden lead with no campaign, no ads, and a fully engaged GOP on the other side. The only 2024 battleground state where we have more than a single poll is New Hampshire, and it looks good there (Biden-Trump):

• Emerson 48-41

• American Pulse 52-40

• St. Anselm College 49-40

It’s early, and we don’t have a lot of data, but Biden leads, his campaign hasn’t begun and the GOP has two really big problems that I don’t think they will be able to overcome next year - abortion and treason.

Abortion and Treason: 2 Enormous Problems for the GOP Brand - In the last few years Republicans did terrible things which could drag down their brand in 2024, and potentially for many years beyond - the ending of Roe and adoption of extremist abortion legislation across the US, and the leading of a party-wide effort to overturn the 2020 election and end American democracy.

I don’t think we yet know how the public is going to react to what we learned in the last few weeks - that the government of the United States, and governments in Georgia and Michigan, believe that the effort to overturn the election was a party-wide effort involving hundreds of Republicans across the US. As I wrote earlier this week, it is possible that the trials of these hundreds of Republicans for betraying their country could last in DC and in the battleground states for years. The only thing like this in our history would have been in the aftermath of the Civil War, and arguably the crimes committed by the modern Republican Party are far worse for they would have ended American democracy altogether

As for abortion and the stripping of rights from women across the US, I also don’t think we know yet the real impact on Republicans. As we’ve seen in Kansas, Michigan and Ohio, it has the potential to splinter the GOP, weakening the relationship between the GOP and important parts of its potential coalition. Look at these new charts from Navigator:

It cannot be overstated how devastating this data is for Republicans. Almost all polling lands in the 40s and 50s, with a party, issue or candidate having only a modest advantage. You just never see an issue of significance yielding results in the teens and twenties. On abortion, the Republicans are really really on the wrong side of an issue that truly matters to tens of millions of voters. Not sure we’ve seen anything like this since I entered politics in the 1980s - and it’s really terrible for Republicans across the US.

Abortion and treason - these two issues could not just be a big problem for Republicans in 2024 but for years and even decades to come. As they should.

Keep working hard all - Simon