Polls in One Place.
21 days later.
A lot has happened since our last edition of Polls in One Place. Let’s start with the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. It was a very close call. Survey research suggests it may not be the last.
1. Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at UChicago:
The striking finding from our June 24 survey is that 10 percent of American adults — the equivalent of 26 million people — agree that “the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from being president.” A third of these people own guns. A fifth think that when police are violently attacked, it is because they deserve it and a similar fraction have attended a political protest in the past year. In other words, a significant minority of Americans are radically opposed to Trump returning to power and they are politically active, with the capacity for violence.
Worse, there are other findings that suggest reason to be concerned that political violence could escalate after the Trump assassination attempt. Our June survey also found that 7 percent of American adults — the equivalent of 18 million people — support the use of force to restore Trump to the presidency. This group has even more dangerous capabilities — with half owning guns; 40 percent thinking “people who stormed the US Capitol are patriots”; and a quarter either being or knowing a militia member.
It is not a stretch to think that these radical Trump supporters are seething after the attempt to assassinate the leader of their movement. Hence, leaders must be prepared for political violence in retaliation in the coming months. (Sources: uchicago.edu, bostonglobe.com)
2. Three slides from Professor Pape’s presentation are here. Along with the 26 million people who agree that “the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president,” an additional 58 million are “ambivalent” about it. Put the two numbers together and your total is 84 million people.
(Sources: cloudfront.net/cpost)
3. Right Direction/Wrong Track.
Richard Wirthlin, President Reagan’s pollster throughout his political career, called the “right direction/wrong track question” the nation’s “political thermometer.” If the “thermometer” was running hot (wrong track), the incumbent president’s re-election prospects were much diminished. It’s been running hot for months now:
(Source: realclearpolling.com)
4. Perceptions of the economy:
It is on economic issues where Biden continues to struggle most. Just 18 per cent of respondents said they felt financially better off since Biden became president, compared with 49 per cent who said they felt worse off. About a third said there had been no change. Those numbers have barely changed since the poll began in November.
The Financial Times and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business poll was conducted between July 8 and 10, more than a week after the debate plunged Democrats into disarray over whether the president was mentally able to continue his campaign or govern for another four years.
Biden’s struggles appear closely tied to voter perceptions about inflation. Over the past three months, 77 per cent of Americans said they believed inflation had gone up — with 44 per cent saying they believed it had gone up a lot — even as it has moderated.
The latest official figures, out last week, showed US inflation fell faster than forecast, to 3 per cent, in June — more than six points lower than the high above 9 per cent reached two years earlier.
At the same time, only 32 per cent of voters said they had benefited from the record run on Wall Street, with 49 per cent saying they had not benefited “at all” from recent record highs for equities. (Sources: ft.com, globalstrategygroup.app.box.com)
5.Many Americans regularly worry they won’t be able to make ends meet. Nearly four in ten (39%) of US adults say they worry most or all of the time that their family’s income won’t be enough to meet expenses, according to a new CNN poll. That’s up from 28% who expressed those concerns in December 2021, and it’s similar to the numbers seen during the Great Recession (37%). To cope, significant shares of Americans said they are adding side jobs, cutting down on driving and putting more expenses on credit cards. About one in three (35%) of Americans say they've had to take on extra work to make ends meet. Many more say they've cut spending on entertainment and extras or changed their grocery habits. Even higher percentages of Latino (52%) and Black (46%) Americans said they’re worried most or all of the time about making ends meet, according to the poll. The findings underscore how, despite national statistics that show unemployment is low and inflation is cooling, millions of Americans are hurting from years of rising prices. Two-thirds of Americans (65%) say in an open-ended question that expenses and the cost of living are the biggest economic problem facing their family today. That’s down from 75% in the summer of 2022 but well ahead of the 43% who mentioned an issue related to expenses in the summer of 2021. The typical household is spending $925 more a month to purchase the same goods and services as three years ago, according to Moody’s Analytics. CNN
6. Job Approval (Biden):
In a Gallup poll conducted almost entirely before he announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race on Sunday, President Joe Biden received a 36% job approval rating from the American people, his lowest to date by one percentage point. The majority of Americans, 58%, continued to disapprove of Biden’s job.
The July 1-21 poll began four days after the debate between Biden and Donald Trump, which prompted mounting calls from Democrats for Biden to end his campaign. The poll ended several hours after Biden announced that he would drop out of the 2024 presidential race.
Biden’s latest approval rating falls well below his 43% term average and his 37.7% 14th-quarter average rating, spanning April 20 to July 19, which is his lowest quarterly average approval rating to date. Among post-World War II presidents, only Jimmy Carter had a lower 14th-quarter job approval rating (35.8%) than Biden, but George H.W. Bush’s 39.2% average was also relatively low.
Both Carter in 1980 and Bush in 1992 lost their reelection bids, underscoring Democrats’ concerns about Biden’s ability to win the 2024 election. Trump’s 14th-quarter average in 2020 was 43.2%, months before Biden defeated him.
7. Job Approval (Trump):
The Wall Street Journal Poll cited below was taken after the assassination attempt, the Republican National Convention, President Biden announcement that he would not seek re-election and Vice President Harris’s emergence as the all-but-certain Democratic presidential nominee. None of those four “developments” seemed to move the Trump’s top-line numbers all that much. But the difference between Biden’s approval rating and Trump’s retrospective approval rating is substantial.
8. Prior to President Biden’s decision to step down as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Council asked “adults” whether both major party nominees should withdraw from the race. The results weren’t surprising in Biden’s case. They were in Trump’s case:
As President Biden continues to face the fallout from his debate performance, 7 in 10 adults, including 65% of Democrats, say he should withdraw and allow his party to select a different nominee. There are growing misgivings about Biden’s mental capability to be an effective president, and few adults think he can win in November…..
Overall, 57% of adults say Trump should withdraw from the race and allow his party to name a replacement. But Trump is maintaining support from his party, with 73% of Republicans saying he should stay in the race. (Source: apnorc.org, italics mine)
9. The presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is essentially tied, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll that shows heightened support for her among nonwhite voters and dramatically increased enthusiasm about the campaign among Democrats. The former president leads the current vice president 49% to 47% in a two-person matchup, but that is within the margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Trump held a six-point lead earlier this month over President Biden before he exited the race and backed Harris. On a ballot test that included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other independent and third-party candidates, Harris receives 45% and Trump gets 44%. Kennedy is backed by just 4% and 5% remain undecided. Biden trailed in the multi-candidate contest by six points in the last poll. (Source: wsj.com)
10. Most voters in four battleground states approve of President Joe Biden getting out of the presidential race and two-thirds want him to complete his term, according to Fox News statewide surveys in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The polls include over 1,000 registered voters in each state and were conducted July 22-24 (after Biden dropped out and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris). The surveys find the horserace between Harris and former President Donald Trump looks a lot like the Biden-Trump race did in April -- extremely close. Harris and Trump are tied in two states (Michigan and Pennsylvania), Trump is ahead by 1 point in Wisconsin, and Harris is up by 6 in Minnesota. (Source: foxnews.com)
11: What’s changed? Enthusiasm:
(Sources: wsj.com, brucemehlman.substack.com)
12. Doug Sosnik:
The only safe prediction that I can make about the 2024 Presidential election is that there will be a record gender gap in the voting.
The gender gap first surfaced as a major factor in voting in the 1980 Presidential election and has persisted in every campaign since then. This gap actually narrowed in 2020 compared to results in 2016 due to Biden’s marginal improvement with male voters while at the same time, Trump performed better with women voters.
The gender gap will roar back with a vengeance this year due to the nature of the Trump and Harris candidacy as well as the issue of abortion.
The programming at the recent Republican Convention made it clear that the Trump campaign has prioritized appealing to male voters. The speakers on Thursday night included legendary wrestler Hulk Hogan while Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championships, introduced Trump for his acceptance speech.
The policies and language of President and candidate Trump as well as the selection of JD Vance as his running mate is pushing women voters into the arms of the Democrats.
And Harris will have a unique appeal to women voters further driving this gender gap. Support by black women for democratic candidates has historically been the single biggest driver in the gender gap between parties. Within hours of Biden’s announcement that he was not seeking re-election, over 90,000 black women joined a conference call in support of Harris’s candidacy.
In addition, there is a widening difference between how generation Z women and men vote. In an April poll released by Harris and Havard when Biden was still the nominee, he had a 33 point margin with 18-29 women voters compared to only a six point advantage with men, With Harris now the nominee, that gap will now be wider.
A final group to contribute to this widening gender gap are college educated women who have been particularly outrages by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe as well as Trump’s takeover of the Republican party. (Sources: Doug Sosnik via Mark Halperin, Wide World of News)
13. The percentage of U.S. adults readily able to access and afford quality healthcare when they need it has dropped six percentage points since 2022 to 55%, the lowest since West Health and Gallup began tracking healthcare affordability in 2021. Although adults aged 50 and older are more likely than those younger than 50 to be “cost secure” -- meaning they have had no recent problems affording care or medicine and can easily access care -- their scores have fallen faster and further over the past two years. The percentages of cost secure adults aged 50 to 64 and 65 and older have both dropped eight points since 2022, to 55% and 71%, respectively. At the same time, the percentage of younger adults has slipped five points, from 52% to 47%. (Source: news.gallup.com)
14. The U.S. fertility rate reached a historic low in 2023, with a growing share of women ages 25 to 44 having never given birth. And the share of U.S. adults younger than 50 without children who say they are unlikely to ever have kids rose 10 percentage points between 2018 and 2023 (from 37% to 47%), according to a Pew Research Center survey. Those younger than 50 who don’t have children and say they are unlikely to in the future About four-in-ten of those in the older group (38%) say there was a time when they wanted to have children. A smaller but sizable share (32%) say they never wanted children, and 25% say they weren’t sure one way or the other. (Source: pewresearch.org)
15. Ukraine:
More than two in five Ukrainians support starting official peace negotiations with Russia, a poll published on Monday has found, as international and domestic concerns grow about Ukraine’s ability to win outright on the battlefield.
The poll, conducted by the Ukraine-based think tank Razumkov Center and local newspaper Mirror of the Week, found 44% of 2,027 respondents wanted to open talks to end the war. Another 35% said it was not time to negotiate yet, while 21% were unsure.
The results reflect waning optimism for a lasting peace: More than 80% of respondents said Putin would only agree to an end on his terms, and an overwhelming majority described those terms as unacceptable. (Sources: semafor.com, zn.ua/ukr)