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Home » And Biden still does better than his possible replacements do in polls against Trump

And Biden still does better than his possible replacements do in polls against Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t say I’d rely overmuch on polls right now – or perhaps ever. But still, I find these results very curious:

The latest Emerson College Polling survey found Trump with 49 percent and Harris with 43 percent among registered voters in a potential match-up, a 6-point lead for the former president. Another 8 percent were undecided.

Harris notched the same share of support as Biden, who also scored 43 percent against Trump — but Biden trailed the presumptive Republican nominee by 3 points, with 43 percent to Trump’s 46 percent, and 11 percent undecided.

So Biden does better than Harris, but it seems to be because he cuts slightly more into support for Trump, not because he gets more votes himself. Therefore the gap is smaller.

And it’s not just the unpopular Harris – it’s also the other Democrats who are mentioned as possible Biden replacements:

Trump was also up in hypothetical head-to-heads against eight other prominent Democratic and independent names floated as potential Biden replacements. He led by 6 points over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), 7 points over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 8 points over California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President Al Gore, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer all came in behind Trump in additional tests.

But a new poll from the Democratic pollster Bendixen & Amandi Inc. found more promising results for Harris — putting the vice president ahead of Trump by 1 point. Harris scored 42 percent to Trump’s 41 percent, while 5 percent of voters picked a third-party candidate and 12 percent were undecided.

I suppose you could just say the polls are worthless at this point, and call it a day. Twelve percent undecided? Does that mean they’ll stay home? Or are those the mail-in ballots waiting for opportune Democratic harvesting?

And national polls are especially worthless; it’s the state polls that matter – or at least, that matter more.

But the whole thing could help explain why the Democrats seem to be resigned to running Biden – for now.

Comments

And Biden <i>still</i> does better than his possible replacements do in polls against Trump — 38 Comments

  1. The funny thing, of course, is that Joe Biden doesn’t exist.

    (Well…“funny”….)

  3. O Cloo-less man of little faith…

    But “Biden” is merciful….
    …to the beautiful people who are also major donors…

  4. That so many Dems are mentioned and most are in the 40+ range shows just how polarized the US electorate is this year.

  7. I was listening to Mollie Hemingway on Fox News in the car about an hour ago. She made the excellent point that Democrats don’t care about Biden’s cognitive decline. They care only about his probable upcoming election loss. If he were way ahead, they’d keep him as a vegetable as long as necessary.

    Their big problem is that they don’t have a candidate ready to win.

  8. The real problem is electoral fraud.

    MN, MI, WI, PA, and AZ are locked in for the Dems due to fraud.

    GA might be, I think so, but want to doubt it.

    This means Trump has almost no path to electoral victory.

    He MUST win VA, NC, and GA.

    We have to vote often and early. Start doing serious vote harvesting, like the Dems.

    Remember that Red Wave in 2022 that didn’t happen? Or all the seats we were supposed to win in CA in … what was it … 2014 but lost at 3am in the morning?

  10. This could be a test on what could happen in England and France in a couple years if the Marxists run amok like I think they will, it’s in their DNA.
    The economy, inflation, wages staggering, crime rising, jobs lost, illegals invading ,healthcare costs rising, and many other usual barometer factors and everyone is just going to vote to keep that train running over the cliff?
    I don’t think the Cultural Marxist Propaganda Ministry has that much power.
    But we will see.
    I think there is no going back with Sundowner, he is done.

  11. Wonder why Obama wasn’t included in these polls? After all, everyone (on both sides) assumes she would crush Trump. I would guess the pollsters were looking for one of these candidates (likely Obama) to perform significantly better than Trump, and when their preferred candidate didn’t, the pollsters took her out and published it as a sort of defense of Biden.

  12. Neo, all of your posts today involve people who hold “inexplicable” views — that is, their allegiance and adherence to irrational and or self-damaging attitudes in the face of overwhelming evidence cannot be explained in any conventional way. To (mis)quote somebody, they are simply different than us. They think differently or don’t really think at all. I fall back on some factoid I read that fewer than 20% of people can express even a remotely coherent political view. Today, no one can or will convince anyone of anything. We must await “events” to see if improvement is possible.

  13. Didn’t the polls have Hillary ahead? Not by fifty points that she anticipated, of course.

  16. The polls that had Hillary ahead included a lot of people lying to pollsters and saying the would vote for Hillary because they were afraid to say they would vote for Trump. No one saying they will vote for Trump is not going to vote for Trump. That the others beside Biden are losing worse tells me that no one is afraid to say they are voting for Biden.

  17. I like your thoughts BobS, but improvement would most logically come via education, and our enemies are in complete control of it. So I’m depressed, and have little hope during my lifetime.

  18. I’ll say it yet again: Democrats are either ignorant, stupid or evil. Often in combination; their leadership surely is touched by all three characteristics.
    What bothers me is that so many voters do not see any of that. They are sheep, sniffing at the trail of MSM propaganda.
    America is basically done, and done for. Jefferson’s belief and hope was that America’s citizens would be literate, but that was way before the MSM and its propaganda. We have a majority who are undiscerning sheep.
    Ah, well.

  19. My last attempt at establishing a link between stupidity and evil didn’t go over so well, but let me float one more idea. Moral reasoning is necessarily abstract reasoning. What if someone simply sucks at abstract reasoning? In other words, they’re stupid. Wouldn’t their conclusions, opinions, and what they regard as deep-thoughts, sometimes appear evil? Not because they are evil, but because they get lost thinking through the consequences of some silly idea with which they’ve been presented?

  20. Polls are polls, true. As static snapshots predicting a future months away … eh.

    However, a consistent change up or down in polls I take more seriously. Biden has been leaking support for months and Trump now has an edge.

    More importantly, since Biden’s horrific debate performance two weeks ago, his numbers have dropped 2-3 points in some key states. Democrats are panicking and rightly so.

    Is there any good news on the horizon for Biden that will turn this around? His condition will not improve. In fact it’s likely to get worse due to its progressive nature.

    But worse for Biden — now there are demands he get out there more and show he is capable. Even worse than that, his performances will be scrutinized for further evidence of his decline.

    My god, the pressure he will be under. By November, if he is still on the ballot, he will likely be a gibbering wreck and an absolute national joke. Jon Stewart is already going at Biden ruthlessly. Biden will lose most of the youth vote.

  21. So this week there is a big NATO summit plus a Biden press conference and it will be a test for Biden. Big liberal papers are calling for him to step aside. Even George Clooney is doing so.

    Maybe Biden can make it through this week. But the tests won’t stop. I think the decision has already been made by the Democrat leadership. The pressure will continue and imagine what sort of leaks could occur.

    For instance, what if the Robert Hur tape is leaked?

    I just don’t see Biden on the ticket in November.

  23. I have a notion that the Democrats knew Biden was, as Mark Steyn says, past his sell-by date, but for some reason had no one else, so they gambled that he would last just long enough. Now they’ve lost that bet but they still have no one better. I may be wrong about this, but it seems to explain a lot.

  25. “…past his sell-by date…”

    OTOH, the constant lies are always steaming fresh…
    “Peter Schiff: More Doom In The Data”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/peter-schiff-more-doom-data
    Key grafs:

    …Peter [Schiff] slams President Biden’s most recent ABC interview in which he tries to excuse his ghastly debate performance. In addition to the president’s still-apparent cognitive problems, Peter takes issue with Biden calling Donald Trump a liar:
    “You know what I detest most is hypocrisy, right? … Biden tells a lot of outright lies. I mean, complete lies. He has no right to call anybody a liar. When you do something yourself, you can’t accuse somebody else. It’s not just, you know, living in glass houses and not throwing stones. Biden has been in politics all of his life. And you don’t stay in politics without being a liar….

    And so he has no right to keep focusing on Trump lying, Trump lying. In fact, the reason he wants to talk about Trump’s lies so much is because that’s what he does. His whole presidency is a lie. Everything out of his mouth is a lie.”….

    But Trump, Trump, Trump…Trump, Trump, Trump….

  26. If the dems were what might be considered a conventional political party, they’d have a bench. Which is to say, competent, not extreme, relatable to others than the local machine, looking normal.

  27. Ah, Richard…they DON’T HAVE TO look “normal”.
    (In fact, they can do…and say…ANYTHING they want!)

    Because—I’ll quote meself—“Trump, Trump, Trump…Trump, Trump, Trump….”

    (AKA Dreyfus Jew Trump…)

  28. Barry,
    In current circumstances, sadly, you’re right.
    But, as a “normal” party, it would happen anyway.

  30. The 12% undecided is telling. Don’t assume that because voters are abandoning Biden (or Harris) that they will vote for Trump. I’ve seen a few polls with Trump at 49% but I don’t recall seeing even one with Trump at or above 50%.

    With the opposition candidate collapsing and his party descending into chaos, this is the time for the GOP candidate to consolidate and try to build a majority. Trump may not be capable of that, or maybe he he is. As a matter of policy, I’m not thrilled with the 2024 GOP platform. As a matter of practical politics, it was probably necessary, so credit to Trump for that. Let’s see if he can build on that with his VP pick. Haley or Youngkin would be ideal. Trump is going to bring the GOP base and his base. (Snubbing them on the platform demonstrates his confidence about that.) He needs someone who helps him salvage votes in the suburbs. I love JD Vance, but he’s not it, not this year. Winning requires a coalition. OK Trump, go build one . . . if you can.

    Frankly, though, if the GOP cannot win a comfortable majority this year, with the Democrats having put themselves in this mess, then turn out the lights, the party’s over. And all of the kvetching that we do here is meaningless because our new progressive overlords are unstoppable.

    (Last point – It’s kind of ironic to me that it is easier for some social conservatives to swallow the bitter medicine when it is administered by Trump. If any other Republican had done what Trump has in the past few weeks, especially with the GOP platform, the usual suspects would be screaming from the hilltops about the “GOPe” selling them out. A thousand and one pro-Trump arguments since 2016 have begun with an assertion that Trump really cares about social conservatives, unlike the evil “GOPe.” But the politics didn’t change. On abortion, and a number of other social issues, the war is over and the right lost. I’m not sure why news of the defeat goes down smoother coming from Trump than it did from Mitt Romney.)

  32. Oh she did that just to tickle da Jews.
    (Such a tease…)

    She KNOWS—woman’s intuition?— that they’re going to vote the big D anyway…(well, most of ‘em).

    And so…win-win chez “Biden”!!!

    File under: 4-D tic-tac-toe…

  33. It’s the same issue with Jews and blacks. The Ds will get majorities, but if they only get 60% of Jews and 80% of blacks (rather than 70% and 90% as they usually do), or even a much lower turnout by blacks, then they are in big trouble.

  35. Anne: explanation (or perhaps “explanation”) here:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/biden-s-awkward-joke-about-wife-of-nato-official-flops-causes-confusion/ar-BB1pKdiC (I’d link directly to the story in The Western Journal, but it’s behind a paywall)

    The official transcript has “talking to…”. Well, OK then.

    FWIW, I heard the same thing you did. I couldn’t believe my ears and thought it must be an AI fake. Or it could be Biden’s usual mush-mouth delivery. Or it could be a case of the media playing “Let’s Go Brandon”. Whatever it is, it’s a talking mess.

  36. “With the opposition candidate collapsing and his party descending into chaos, this is the time for the GOP candidate to consolidate and try to build a majority. Trump may not be capable of that, or maybe he he is. As a matter of policy, I’m not thrilled with the 2024 GOP platform. As a matter of practical politics, it was probably necessary, so credit to Trump for that.” – Bauxite

    Trump has built a coalition that can win. It’s the Democrat-Lite Republicans that are unwilling to get on board. Right now it’s time for conservatives/Republicans to focus on the chaos brought to the country by the Democrat left– and yet the usual suspects can do nothing but complain that Trump isn’t the perfect candidate.

    For 50 years pro-life/Christians have wailed against the unconstitutional Roe v. Wade decision. The stated goal was to overturn that monstrous decision. Trump delivered exactly what the pro-life movement wanted. Trump realizes that given the media obsession with abortion on demand– any national restriction on abortion would fail. Could even something like restrictions at viability or first trimester pass? And all of this is moot, since the majority of abortions are now chemical– which would be nearly impossible to enforce.

    Homosexual marriage is now a constitutionally protected right in America. Could there come a time when a majority of SC Justices find that Obergefell was wrongly decided?

    Why is the reaction to the changes to the GOP platform disturbing? A friend thinks some Christians take this as a betrayal and may not vote this year! They would rather have four more years of accelerating decline of the country under a President Harris? Has the right also lost their minds?

    We have had nothing but chaos in the country since the summer of burning cities. Will it abate with a President Trump? Sadly no, because chaos is all the left knows.

  37. Brian E “Trump has built a coalition that can win.”

    That remains to be seen. Trump got lucky in 2016 and, with the exception of the Senate in 2018, his coalition hasn’t won anything significant since. Any political coalition worth a dime would be able to ride the current Democratic party chaos to a solid victory. Maybe Trump can do it. We’ll see.

    One thing is certain, though, the 2016-2022 Trump coalition needs more voters. If Trump can add them, all credit to him. If he cannot, if Trump loses this year or just squeaks by like he did in 2016, we need to finally put to bed the idea that Trump is capable of building a winning coalition.

  38. …if Trump loses this year or just squeaks by like he did in 2016, we need to finally put to bed the idea that Trump is capable of building a winning coalition.

    Bauxite:

    Personally I think The Times are building a winning coalition.

    Trump is just a guy crazy enough, for good and bad reasons, to reach out and touch the lightning.

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