Polls in One Place.
“Polls in One Place” is a weekly feature of Political News Items that brings to your attention some of the most interesting and/or important polls (and charts) of the previous week. We do our best to limit the number of polls concerning the US presidential election, since it will almost certainly be very close in the seven (or eight states and two Congressional Districts) that will determine the outcome in the Electoral College. There’s no point in telling you the race is going to be close if we already know it’s going to be close.
A general rule of thumb regarding the national electorate: If the race is tied nationally, Trump is ahead in the majority, if not all, of the “battleground states.” The Electoral College, not by design, is almost perfectly configured to Republican advantage. In 2020, Biden won the national popular vote by 4 percentage points (7 million votes). He won in the Electoral College by the skin of his teeth. Had 45,000 votes switch in 3 states, the Electoral College vote would have been a tie, 269-269.
Another thing to remember is that there is no longer such a thing as Election Day. There are election days. There are election weeks, one after the other. Fifty-Seven (57) percent of the nation’s voters voted before Election Day in 2020; 36% voted by mail or absentee ballot and 21% voted in person. Forty-three (43) percent voted on Election Day. In theory, the polling should get more accurate as we get closer to Election Day, because an ever larger number of voters will already have voted.
All that said, we do feature one or two (or three) “horse race” polls (because they tend to set the news media narrative of the campaign) and some “issue polls” that gauge which issues are have what effect on the electorates nationally and in key states.
1. Gallup’s National Institutions Index:
For the first time in almost two decades of polling, the United States now lags behind most of the other leading industrialized nations in the G7 across a range of Gallup indicators. The U.S. trails several G7 countries when it comes to its own people’s confidence in the national government and key institutions -- including the military and the judiciary -- as well as the ability of its people to meet their basic needs.
Since 2006, Americans’ confidence in the nation’s military has stood out among the G7. Even though it continues to spend more on its military than most nations on Earth combined, Americans’ confidence in their armed forces dipped to a new low of 81% in 2023, for the first time falling significantly below the ratings of another G7 member country (France).
Americans have been losing confidence in their judicial system every year since 2020, dropping to 42% in 2023. The U.S. is now statistically tied with Italy as the G7 country with least faith in its judiciary. For years, Italy has lagged significantly behind the rest of the G7 on this measure -- but recent increases alongside U.S. decreases have brought about this shift in the rankings.
The U.S. continues to rank above the rest of the G7 in the proportion of its residents struggling to afford food. Every year since 2009, the U.S. has been at the top (or tied at the top) of the G7 for inability to afford food at times in the previous year. Last year, more than one in four Americans (26%) struggled to afford food at times, far above second-place Canada (17%).
Given these realities, the U.S. now ranks last on the National Institutions Index compared with the rest of the G7. The U.S. remains the dominant voice of the G7 on the global stage. But the reality of public opinion at home is starting to tell a different story: one in which the U.S. no longer stands out as a leader in confidence in institutions, fundamental to its democracy. (Source: news.gallup.com, italics mine)
2. AARP/NORC survey:
About one-quarter of U.S. adults age 50 and older who are not yet retired say they expect to never retire and 70% are concerned about prices rising faster than their income, an AARP survey finds. About 1 in 4 have no retirement savings, according to research released Wednesday by the organization that shows how a graying America is worrying more and more about how to make ends meet even as economists and policymakers say the U.S. economy has all but achieved a soft landing after two years of record inflation. Everyday expenses and housing costs, including rent and mortgage payments, are the biggest reasons why people are unable to save for retirement. The data will matter this election year as Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican rival Donald Trump are trying to win support from older Americans, who traditionally turn out in high numbers, with their policy proposals. The AARP’s study, based on interviews completed with more than 8,000 people in coordination with the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, finds that one-third of older adults with credit card debt carry a balance of more than $10,000 and 12% have a balance of $20,000 or more. Additionally, 37% are worried about meeting basic living costs such as food and housing. (Source: apnews.com)
3. New Car Loan Rate in One Chart:
4. Half of U.S. households can only afford a $400 car payment. Their options — new or used — are scarce. Car affordability may be improving this year, but prices remain far above levels that the average consumer can comfortably pay. “The $25,000 car is fast becoming a unicorn for any automaker,” said Edmunds Consumer Insight Analyst Joseph Yoon. Still, it’s the price point most Americans can actually afford. “The typical American household can afford a car payment of around $400 a month,” Cox Automotive Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke said last year. “With an average monthly payment of nearly twice that, the new-vehicle market remains heavily skewed toward the most affluent buyers.” At current interest rates for new cars, if a buyer wanted to bring their monthly payment close to $400, they could only borrow up to $20,000 on a 60-month loan, according to FICO’s loan calculator. The problem is, “the $20,000 new vehicle is nearly extinct, and the $25,000 new vehicle is next in line,” according to a new report by Edmunds. Only 0.4% of new vehicles sold this past February were $20,000 or under. The average payment is now $744, according to Kelley Blue Book. That’s down from $795 in late 2022 but far higher than the $400 price point. The climb in new-car prices has driven more consumers to buy used cars. Dealers sold 1.66 million used vehicles in March, up 10.9% compared with a year earlier. Still, the average amount financed on used vehicles is about $27,800, and interest rates for used cars are typically higher than for new cars. The average monthly payment on a used car is $549, according to Edmunds data. (Source: marketwatch.com)
5. The foreign-born population in the United States has grown considerably over the past 50 years in both size and share of the U.S. population.1 In 1970, it numbered 9.6 million (4.7 percent) of the total U.S. population (Figure 1). By 2022, it was estimated to be 46.2 million (13.9 percent) of the total U.S. population. In 2022, nearly a quarter of the U.S. foreign-born population lived in California. Of the 46.2 million foreign-born in the United States, 10.4 million lived in California. Another 5.2 million resided in Texas, followed by 4.8 million in Florida and 4.5 million in New York (Table 1). Of these states, California had the largest number of foreign-born individuals in both 2010 and 2022. Meanwhile, New York’s foreign-born population dropped from second- to fourth-largest in the country. In both 2010 and 2022, less than half of the foreign-born in the United States lived outside these four states. (Source: census.gov)
6. Axios Vibes Survey:
Half of Americans — including 42% of Democrats — say they'd support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a new Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll. And 30% of Democrats — as well as 46% of Republicans — now say they'd end birthright citizenship, something guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
Why it matters: Americans are open to former President Trump's harshest immigration plans, spurred on by a record surge of illegal border crossings and a relentless messaging war waged by Republicans. President Biden is keenly aware the crisis threatens his re-election. He's sought to flip the script by accusing Trump of sabotaging Congress' most conservative bipartisan immigration bill in decades. But when it comes to blame, Biden so far has failed to shift the narrative: 32% of respondents say his administration is "most responsible" for the crisis, outranking any other political or structural factor. Amid a record number of border crossings, nearly two-thirds of Americans said illegal immigration is a real crisis, not a politically driven media narrative. (Source: axios.com)
7. President Joe Biden averaged 38.7% job approval during his recently completed 13th quarter in office, which began on Jan. 20 and ended April 19. None of the other nine presidents elected to their first term since Dwight Eisenhower had a lower 13th-quarter average than Biden. The latest quarterly average for Biden is technically the lowest of his presidency to date, though not meaningfully different from the previous quarter’s 39.0%. After Biden averaged better than 50% approval during his first two quarters in office, his subsequent readings have been near 40%. (Source: news.gallup.com)
8. CNN Poll:
Former President Trump continues to hold an advantage over President Biden as the campaign – and the former president’s criminal trial – move forward, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. And in the coming rematch, opinions about the first term of each man vying for a second four years in the White House now appear to work in Trump’s favor, with most Americans saying that, looking back, Trump’s term as president was a success, while a broad majority says Biden’s has so far been a failure.
Trump’s support in the poll among registered voters holds steady at 49% in a head-to-head matchup against Biden, the same as in CNN’s last national poll on the race in January, while Biden’s stands at 43%, not significantly different from January’s 45%.
Looking back, 55% of all Americans now say they see Trump’s presidency as a success, while 44% see it as a failure. In a January 2021 poll taken just before Trump left office and days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, 55% considered his time as president a failure. (Source: cnn.com)
9. President Joe Biden’s recent polling bump in key battleground states has mostly evaporated as a deep current of pessimism about the trajectory of the US economy hurts his standing with voters. The April Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll found Biden is ahead in just one of the seven states most likely to determine the outcome of his matchup with Donald Trump, leading Michigan by 2 percentage points. Biden trails the presumptive GOP nominee slightly in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and his deficit in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina is larger. The reversion comes as poll respondents offered a bleak near-term view of the economy, the issue that has consistently registered as their top concern at the ballot box. A majority of swing-state voters see worsening economic conditions in the coming months, with fewer than one in five saying they expect inflation and borrowing costs to be lower by the end of the year. Despite a resilient job market, only 23% of respondents said the employment rate would improve over the same time period. For undecided voters — a group crucial to Biden’s effort to close the gap with Trump — the share who expect improvement on those economic factors was in the single digits. (Source: bloomberg.com)
10. The Federal Deficit (U.S.) in One Chart:
11. Gold Trading In China:
12. Germans have a more positive view of the role of the state than they did 30 years ago and consider it responsible for many areas of life, according to a new survey. In the representative Allensbach survey carried out on behalf of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) broadsheet, 44% of Germans said they thought the state was "likeable" whereas only 18% considered it "unlikeable." When the survey was first carried out three decades ago, the two views were roughly equal at about 34% each. Asked which areas of life the state ought to be responsible for, the answer among almost all Germans appears to be: nearly everything. But crime prevention (94%), schools (94%), universities (82%), the economy (80%) and management of inflation (79%) came out at the top of the list. A majority of Germans were also in favor of more state regulation of immigration (78%), the internet (69%) and food safety (66%). There were only three areas where a majority of respondents believed the state shouldn't get involved: balanced media reporting, healthy living and construction of housing. (Sources: dw.com)
13. Young people are more likely to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) than previously, a study published last Tuesday showed. Authors of the "Youth in Germany 2024" study said that under-30s were increasingly disgruntled with their social and economic situation, and that fears about future prosperity were driving a shift to the right. The AfD's signature issue is a hard-line anti-immigration stance, and the data showed that migration was among young people's main concerns. About 22% of the 2,000 young people aged 14 to 29 said they intended to vote for the AfD if they were able to vote in parliamentary elections right now. That figure is more than double what it was two years ago, the study said. Only 9% of young people said they would vote for the AfD in 2022, compared to 12% last year. The online study, conducted in January and February, found that young people were becoming increasingly dissatisfied, especially with their social and economic situation, compared with previous years. Climate change concerns are on the wane, they said, but fears are growing when it comes to issues such as inflation, the economy and poverty in old age. Young people were especially worried about inflation (65%), expensive housing (54%), poverty in old age (48%), the division of society (49%) and an increase in migrant and refugee flows (41 percent). The study shows a high level of dissatisfaction with the political situation and an increased potential for right-wing populist attitudes.
14. With six weeks to go before the European elections, an opinion poll shows the right-wing Rassemblement National (RN) remains entrenched in first place of voting intentions, but behind it, things are moving. A second duel is taking shape between President Emmanuel Macron's coalition and the alliance between the Socialists and Raphaël Glucksmann's small party Place Publique, and undecided voters or those uncertain to vote could still shake up the current trends on the day of the vote, Sunday, June 9. These are the takeaways from the fourth round of the survey carried out by IPSOS, in partnership with the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po (CEVIPOF), the Institut Montaigne, the Jean Jaurès Foundation and Le Monde. According to this poll conducted from April 19 to 24 using the quota sampling method among a large sample of 10,651 people representative of the French population registered to vote, aged 18 and over, the RN and its lead candidate Jordan Bardella have improved by 1 percentage point compared to the previous round, in March, reaching 32% of voting intentions (with a margin of error of 1.3 points). Macron's ruling coalition (Renaissance, MoDem, Horizons and UDI) and its lead candidate Valérie Hayer have fallen by one point, down to 17% (margin of error: 1.1 points), while Glucksmann's PS-Place Publique is coming closer and closer to second place. (Source: lemonde.fr.en)
15. The share of American college students who blame Hamas for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel has declined by more than 10 percentage points in the last six months, according to a new Generation Lab poll of two-and four-year college students. Forty-one percent of college students say Hamas deserves blame for its Oct. 7 attack that the Israeli government says killed 1,200 people — down from 52% who said that in an earlier Generation Lab poll released in mid-October 2023 after the attack, which prompted an Israeli military response in Gaza that is still ongoing. By contrast, 27% in the new poll believe Israel deserves blame for the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which is up from 11% in October. By party, 66% of Republican college students, 43% of independents and just 34% of Democratic college students say Hamas deserves blame for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. (Source: nbcnews.com)
16. A full 54% of Americans (and 56% of registered voters) now want Congress to pass “a law that keeps abortion as legal and accessible as it was nationwide under Roe v. Wade,” according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll. That is the highest level of public support for making Roe the “law of the land” since Yahoo News and YouGov started asking about the issue in spring 2022. In contrast, just 30% of Americans (and 33% of registered voters) would oppose federal legislation designed to restore the half-century status quo under Roe, which protected abortion rights until 22 or 23 weeks of pregnancy — the point of “viability,” at which a fetus can survive outside the womb. The new Yahoo News/YouGov survey of 1,746 U.S. adults, which was conducted from April 11 to 15, highlights the political risks facing anti-abortion Republicans ahead of the 2024 election if they continue to push for hard-line state bans. (Source: yahoo.com/news)
17. Forty-five percent of the public has become more concerned about climate change over the past year, while another 45% percent say their level of concern has not changed. Just 10% are less concerned than they were last year. Democrats are more likely to say they have become more concerned than either independents or Republicans (63% vs. 43% vs. 24%). More broadly, a majority of the public believes climate change is happening (71%), similar to past AP-NORC surveys. Just 11% believe climate change is not happening, while 18% are unsure. Of those who believe it is happening, 65% say it is mostly caused by human activities, 12% think it is caused mostly by natural changes, and 22% think it is driven equally by human activities and natural changes. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say both that climate change is happening (88% vs. 54%) and that is primarily driven by human activities (75% vs. 43%). Sixty-seven percent of the public believes large businesses and corporations, oil and gas companies, and developed or industrialized countries outside the U.S. are not doing enough to address climate change. Most also agree developing countries, state and local officials, and individuals are not doing enough. Relatedly, 8 in 10 think that large businesses and corporations, oil and gas companies, developed or industrialized countries outside the U.S., and the U.S. federal government have at least some responsibility for addressing climate change. The vast majority also believe that their state and local governments, developing countries, and individual people are at least somewhat responsible. (Source: apnorc.org)