We are six months away from the general election in the United States.
I thought I would start a new feature in BeeLine focused on the most interesting data I am seeing in polling surveys that I come across in my research.
Polls are not always completely accurate. However, they are generally good barometers to discern major trends.
Here are a mixture of data points in various polls I have seen lately that might provide some perspective on what is currently on the minds of American voters.
The Youth Vote
There is no age demographic that is more important for Joe Biden in the 2024 election than that of age 18-29 voters.
I wrote a blog post several weeks ago that asked the question, "Is Biden in Trouble With Younger Voters?", that focused on some polling data that showed young voters becoming increasingly disillusioned with Biden.
Biden won the 18-29 youth vote in 2020 by 24 points over Trump (60%-36%). It was an even larger margin than Hillary's 19 point margin in 2016.
A recent poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School that was exclusively focused on age 18-29 voters provides further confirmation that Biden faces a struggle with the youth vote this year.
The poll found that Biden is only up 8 points with all 18-29 year olds although his margin improves to 13 points with registered voters and 19 points with likely voters.
The youth numbers also reveal the large gender gap we have become accustomed to seeing between Republican and Democrat candidates.
Among likely young voters, Biden is +33 points with women but only +6 with young men.
This result is not surprising when you consider the large number of single women in the 18-29 age group and the large divide in voting patterns we have been seeing in recent years between those who are married and unmarried.
For example, in the 2020 midterms, exit polling revealed these splits between men and women, married and unmarried.
Married men and women and unmarried men voted Republican.
Unmarried women voted Democrat by a 2;1 margin.
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| Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/1787170/no-one-benefits-more-from-the-destruction-of-the-american-family-than-the-democratic-party/ |
This is a pattern we have been seeing for some time.
It almost goes without saying that there would be few Democrats in elected office if it were not for unmarried women.
There is also a significant enthusiasm gap with youth voters between the two candidates. Just 44% of Biden voters say they are enthusiastic for their candidate compared to 76% who support Trump.
Underlying these poor results for Biden is the most interesting data point I found in the poll.
Only 9% of young voters say the country is headed in the right direction.
To put that in perspective, 21% of this age demographic expressed confidence the country was headed in the right direction in the midst of the Covid lockdowns in Spring, 2020.
I found another interesting insight in the poll in the answer to this survey question that Harvard has been tracking in its youth poll for the last decade.
How often do you trust the President to do the right thing?
Notice that confidence was relatively high with Obama, plummeted immediately when Trump took office and immediately rebounded with Biden in 2021. However, confidence in the President then steadily declined throughout the Biden term to where it is now lower than at any time in the Trump years.
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| Source: https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/47th-edition-spring-2024 |
This is not an encouraging sign for Biden six months before the election.
Considering this polling data you can be assured that the Biden campaign is going to do everything it can to retain the youth vote. That is why Biden is again attempting to cancel student loan debt, will keep pounding away on the abortion issue and is not doing anything about criticizing the anti-Semitic protests on college campuses.
Biden simply cannot win unless he has large vote margins with 18-29 age voters.
The Immigration Issue
Donald Trump would have never defeated 17 other candidates for the GOP nomination in 2016 or won the general election that year over Hillary Clinton without his strong stand against illegal immigration.
It was the signature issue that separated Trump from the pack in 2016 and will likely determine his final prospects in 2024.
The good news for Trump this year is that Joe Biden's open borders policy has made it one of the top issues this cycle.
A couple of months ago it was actually the #1 issue on the minds of most voters according to a number of polls.
It has recently fallen to #2 behind the economy as the border crisis has gotten less media attention due to Israel/ Iran, the campus protests and the Trump trial.
That trend in itself is instructive as it shows the extent to which the media shapes the news agenda which in turn has a major influence on the minds of voters.
What will the big news stories be in six months?
That is why it is so difficult to forecast the final results of the 2024 election no matter what the polls say today.
Recent polls are looking favorable to Donald Trump.
For example. a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll released last week of the seven key swing states (AZ, GA, MI, NV, NC, PA, NC) had 34% of respondents state that the Economy was the most important issue followed by Immigration at 15%.
When asked who they trusted more to handle the Economy, Trump had a 51%-36% advantage over Biden.
On the issue of Immigration, Trump has a 52%-32% advantage.
Considering the importance of these issues in the minds of voters, it is not surprising that Trump is leading in six of the seven swing states surveyed in the poll.
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| Credit: https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/1783202450297565352 |
To get an idea of the depth of concern that voters have about the Immigration issue, a recent Harris poll found that a majority of voters say they actually support the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.
This action is even supported by 42% of Democrats.
Illegal immigration has been a major political issue in the United States for at least the last 30 years.
However, I have never seen a hardline policy such as mass deportations find majority support in the electorate.
Given these views, you can expect Trump to hit the Immigration issue over and over again during the next six months.
Joe Biden has to hope that news coverage of chaos at the southern border will fade.
Biden and the Democrats also have to be living in fear that a terrorist event or high profile crimes from illegals will not capture the headlines over the next six months.
Immigration is a winning issue for Trump. It is a losing issue for Biden in every way.
Can I Get Off Work To Vote?
An Emerson College poll released last week has a fascinating breakdown of voter preferences for Trump and Biden correlated with the average number of hours that those voters report working each week.
Trump has a huge margin with voters who work at least 40 hours per week.
In fact, the more someone works the greater the odds are that they support Donald Trump.
Voters who average 60+ hours of work per week favor Trump by an astounding 80%-9%.
Biden is favored by those who work part-time hours.
Those that do not work at all are evenly split between Trump and Biden.
My guess is that this is only the case because older retirees who usually support Republican candidates are offsetting the Democrat bias in those who do not work at all and are relying on government programs.
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| Source: https://emersoncollegepolling.com/april-national-poll-3-in-4-us-voters-say-cost-of-living-is-rising/ |
Does this data not speak volumes about the Makers and Takers society that author Peter Schweizer first wrote about in 2008 and that increasingly reflects very differing political views among those paying the bills and those relying on government?.
All of this should also suggest that when the takers outnumber the makers we are in very big trouble in the United States.
Unfortunately, we are getting closer to that point every day.
Better To Be A Governor
Joe Biden has an abysmal net Presidential approval rating.
His average net approval rating right now is -17 points (39% approve, 56% disapprove) according to 538.com.
Trump was -8 net approval at a similar point in his Presidency during the initial Covid lockdowns.
Gallup shows that Biden has the lowest approval scores at this point in his term compared to any President they have surveyed for since they began tracking this metric with Eisenhower.
Trump has a negative favorability rating overall (-11) but it is still better than Biden's -14 or the -17 of VP Kamala Harris in the RealClearPolitics poll average.
The bottom line in this election is that many voters would rather not have to choose between Trump and Biden.
In fact, a Pew Research poll released last week indicates that about half of all voters would like to see both Trump and Biden replaced on the ballot.
That view is held by 62% of Biden supporters!
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| Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/24/in-tight-presidential-race-voters-are-broadly-critical-of-both-biden-and-trump/pp_2024-4-24_biden-trump_0-03/ |
The unfavorable view that many voters have of both candidates is further driven home when you see the latest Morning Consult poll of approval ratings of the 50 state governors.
All 50 state governors have a higher approval/favorability rating than Biden or Trump.
Only one governor, Tina Kotek, D-OR, has a net negative approval rating. Kotek is -2.
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| Credit: https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/1782530052799734019 |
I thought it was interesting to see both Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Kim Reynold (R-IA) at the lower end of the net approval rating list.
How do you explain that?
I think it shows the power of Trump in the Republican Party.
Reynolds snubbed Trump and endorsed DeSantis in the GOP primary races.
Of course, DeSantis challenged Trump for the Republican nomination.
Many Democrats already did not approve of DeSantis and Reynolds in their home states. Add in some Republicans who do not look kindly on the challenge to Trump and it shows in the approval rating.
When Donald Trump first ran for President many said he did not represent the Republican Party.
Even when he beat Hillary Clinton many establishment party members continued to echo that claim.
After the 2020 election the volume of those claims increased.
However, most of those who were vociferous about that are fading from the scene.
If Trump wins in 2024 he will be the Republican Party as much as Ronald Reagan became the total embodiment of the Republican Party in the early 1980's.
The lesson here is that it is the people who decide what their party stands for and who represents them.
It is not the politicians.
Politicians who do not understand this principle do not remain in politics for long.
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