For obvious reasons, we decided to wait before posting “Polls in One Place” this week. Ordinarily, the polls we find range from “interesting” to “very interesting.” Not this week. This week, they are (really) important, because they may well determine how the Biden campaign’s meltdown ends.
That President Biden is incapable of “serving effectively” as the nation’s chief executive for four more years is, by now, understood by all the parties, which means all of us. At some level, we already know how this saga ends: Biden will deliver an Oval Office address announcing he will not seek re-election.
The question that remains is: “When?”
This is where the polls — national, state, Congressional District, down-ballot — will be decisive. Democratic Party elected officials are fully supportive of President Biden all the way up to the point where he begins to hurt their chances of winning re-election. At which point, he instantly becomes dead weight.
It appears we have arrived at that point.
1. The Wall Street Journal:
Donald Trump has opened a 6-point lead over President Biden among voters nationally, with 80% saying that the president is too old to run for a second term, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds.
Trump’s lead over Biden in a two-person matchup, 48% to 42%, is the widest in Journal surveys dating to late 2021 and compares with a 2-point lead in February. The new survey began interviewing voters two days after the debate with Trump that left Democrats panicked about the 81-year-old president’s possible cognitive decline and their party’s weakening election prospects in November.
The new survey contains a range of signs that Biden’s political standing has weakened, at the same time a small but growing number of Democrats are calling for him to withdraw as the party’s nominee. The share who say he is too old to run rose 7 points from the Journal’s survey in February. Some 34% now view the president in a favorable light, a low mark in Journal surveys, with 63% viewing him unfavorably. Less than 40% approve of his handling of inflation, immigration, the economy or his office overall….
Democrats show significant discontent with Biden as their nominee. Some 76% say he is too old to run this year, or about the same share as Republicans who hold that view. Two-thirds of Democrats would replace Biden on the ballot with another nominee.(Source: wsj.com, italics mine)
2. The New York Times:
Donald J. Trump’s lead in the 2024 presidential race has widened after President Biden’s fumbling debate performance last week, as concerns that Mr. Biden is too old to govern effectively rose to new heights among Democrats and independent voters, a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College showed.
Mr. Trump now leads Mr. Biden 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters nationally, a three-point swing toward the Republican from just a week earlier, before the debate. It is the largest lead Mr. Trump has recorded in a Times/Siena poll since 2015. Mr. Trump leads by even more among registered voters, 49 percent to 41 percent.
Doubts about Mr. Biden’s age and acuity are widespread and growing. A majority of every demographic, geographic and ideological group in the poll — including Black voters and those who said they will still be voting for him — believe Mr. Biden, 81, is too old to be effective. (Source: nytimes.com, italics mine)
3. CNN Poll:
Three-quarters of US voters say the Democratic Party would have a better shot at holding the presidency in 2024 with someone other than President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. His approval rating also has hit a new low following a shaky performance in the first debate of this year’s presidential campaign.
In a matchup between the presumptive major-party nominees, voters nationwide favor former President Donald Trump over Biden by 6 points, 49% to 43%, identical to the results of CNN’s national poll on the presidential race in April, and consistent with the lead Trump has held in CNN polling back to last fall.
The poll also finds Vice President Kamala Harris within striking distance of Trump in a hypothetical matchup: 47% of registered voters support Trump, 45% Harris, a result within the margin of error that suggests there is no clear leader under such a scenario. Harris’ slightly stronger showing against Trump rests at least in part on broader support from women (50% of female voters back Harris over Trump vs. 44% for Biden against Trump) and independents (43% Harris vs. 34% Biden). (Source: cnn.com)
4. Reuters/Ipsos Poll:
One in three Democrats think U.S. President Joe Biden should end his reelection bid following last week's debate against Republican Donald Trump, but no prominent elected Democrat does any better than Biden in a hypothetical matchup against Trump, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Tuesday.
The two-day poll found that both Trump, 78, and Biden, 81, maintain the support of 40% of registered voters, suggesting that Biden has not lost ground since the debate.
Among the names of top Democrats put before respondents, only Michelle Obama, wife of former Democratic President Barack Obama, outperformed Biden and led Trump 50% to 39% in a hypothetical matchup. Michelle Obama, author of the best-selling 2018 memoir "Becoming," has said repeatedly she does not intend to run for president. (Source: reuters.com)
Ed Note: We think the Ipsos poll is an outlier, but included it this brief because of the Michelle Obama data. It is 99.9999% certain that Mrs. Obama has no interest in running for president. But it’s interesting and perhaps important that she crushes Trump in a hypothetical general election match-up.
5. Democratic Members of Congress:
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers are considering signing a letter demanding that President Joe Biden withdraw from the race, a senior party official said, as panic mounts that he’ll cost them control of Congress.
Biden is rapidly losing the support of Democratic lawmakers and candidates concerned the 81-year-old incumbent’s continued candidacy would lead to a Republican sweep of Washington and an unchecked Donald Trump presidency.
Democrats running for reelection in traditionally safe Democratic districts are circulating the letter, the official said, underscoring how widespread the panic is within the party. (Source: bloomberg.com, italics mine)
6. New York magazine:
(W)ith Biden signaling that he has every intention of staying in the race, the alarm (among donors and elected officials) hasn’t dissipated; it has grown exponentially. Democratic senators and governors are furious with the president for not having called to reassure them and with his White House and campaign teams for insisting both his health and political prospects are in better shape than they appeared to 50 million viewers. Unable to reach Biden, lawmakers in Washington are begging Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Jim Clyburn, and Nancy Pelosi to persuade Biden to leave the race or at least to get a message to Barack Obama, First Lady Jill Biden, or the president’s sister, Val. (Heavy-hitting donors are having similar conversations.) Many on Capitol Hill have turned to hoping the bottom falls out of their party’s own polling, which they believe would force an ultimatum on Biden: Step aside as the nominee, or let Democrats lose both the White House and Congress to Donald Trump and Republicans. (Source: nymag.com, italics mine)
7. Direction of the Country (Real Clear Politics Polling Average):
(Source: realclearpolling.com)
8. Election Day in the United Kingdom:
Labour is on track to win the largest majority of any party in modern history, a major poll has suggested, as Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer made their final appeals for support.
As voters go to the polls today, the last YouGov survey of the campaign found that Labour was on track for a 212-seat majority, with the Conservatives reduced to just 102 MPs.
However, Sunak urged voters who had abandoned his party to return, saying that they had the “power to prevent an unchecked Labour government”.
The prime minister said he was going into polling day with a “clear conscience” knowing that he had worked as hard as he could to do “right for the country”.
The YouGov poll found that Starmer was on track to become prime minister on Friday with 431 MPs — which would be not only Labour’s best ever election performance but the biggest majority for any party since 1832. The Tories were predicted to lose more than 70 per cent of the seats the party won five years ago. (Source: thetimes.com)
9. The French Elections. Analysis by Eurointelligence:
The Nouvel Observateur did some back-on-the-envelope calculations on what can be said for the second round given the numbers from the first. Some constituencies will simply confirm the first round. The article assumes that this is the case for those races where the leading party either got more than 45% of the votes or is 15 percentage points ahead of the second candidate. This results in the following numbers for the second round:
400 constituencies are then quasi decided: 135-140 for the Rassemblement National, 110-120 for the Nouveau Front Populaire, 90 for Ensemble, around twenty for Les Républicains, and around forty for all the others (left, right, centre, or unclassifiable).
There are 160 swing-constituencies. In 155 of them, the RN is in the lead, but not all will be won thanks to strategic alliances in multi-way races.
This is not simply a question of who is first and with what percentage point they lead. Whether or not the RN wins a majority depends on how those strategic alliances shift votes in those three-way and four-way elections.
Le Monde counted 221 third candidates who withdrew from the race, mainly to prevent the RN from winning. This leaves another 90 multi-way second rounds, most of them races where the RN is not leading. Amongst the withdrawals, the left provided most, with 130 out of its 308 candidates who qualified for the second round; amongst Macron’s centrists 81 out of 250 who qualified dropped out.Those withdrawals benefit the centrists more than the left. They could win over 100 seats in the end. There will be a price to pay for this sacrifice after the elections. Perhaps it is a government with the left?
Could Les Républicains become the swing vote? Eric Ciotti and his camp are advocating that LR voters should back the RN where they can to prevent the left from rising. But this is not a unified position within the party, which is split. What unifies them is their fear of the left, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in particular. Mélenchon is the enemy on the right, as if he is their de facto leader. In those races, where the RN faces a left candidate, a traditional LR voter is likely to side with the RN or abstain, and vote for the second only if it is a Socialist candidate. (Source: eurointelligence.com, Run-off election day is Sunday, 7 July 2024)
10. The Fourth of July:
Two in five Americans, 41%, say they are “extremely proud” to be American, the fifth consecutive year this reading has been in the 38% to 43% range. Another 26% of U.S. adults say they are “very proud,” also in line with recent years. The 67% combined share of Americans who are extremely or very proud is consistent with readings since 2018 and among the lowest in Gallup’s trend, just four percentage points above the record low of 63% in 2020. From 2001 through 2017, no fewer than 75% of U.S. adults said they were extremely or very proud, including majorities who were extremely proud. The latest data are from a June 3-23 Gallup poll, which finds 18% of Americans say they are “moderately proud” to be American, while 10% say they are “only a little” proud and 5% are “not at all” proud. Americans’ national pride was highest after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, when patriotism surged in the U.S. Extreme pride has been trending downward since 2015. (Source: news.gallup.com)
Song for the Day: America The Beautiful. Performed by Keb Mo.