2020 Presidential Campaign - It’s on

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An important clip for all the young folks here to watch (and the non-Americans) – this is what us old folks have known about Joe Biden for decades.

Exit question: Is Joe Biden dead meat, yes or no?

A bigger question: are the majority of Americans dead meat under Trump's reign when he puts money over human lives?

A bigger question: are the majority of Americans dead meat under Trump's reign when he puts money over human lives?

i wish to hell it wasn't so forbiddingly hard to move to canada.

Or Japan or Iceland or the Netherlands. I was considering Brazil before Bolsonaro took over.

None of these facts should be taken too strictly but Biden certainly starts with an advantage. We'll hopefully get some really good polling over the months to come.

Can't remember where we were discussing the impact of COVID-19 on polling.

In late March, Trump entered his best polling position for three years, with less than 50% of Americans "disapproving" of him, and as many as 46% "approving". From memory, ASPartofMe predicted that Trump's polling would permanently improve, while XFilesGeek predicted it would quickly revert to normal. Both were reasonable predictions with some precedent.

Trump is now back to 52.5% "disapprove", which is roughly where he's been for the past two years (with the exception of January 2019 where he had a spell of unusual unpopularity, probably due to the shutdown). You could argue that his "approve" numbers, 43.5%, are slightly higher than before the rally, but I don't feel confident reading much into that.

I'd argue that Trump's strategy of attacking governors and trying to "go back to normal" has backfired. Strategically, he should have played up the threat of the virus and emphasised the need for unity. He has previously hitched his re-election campaign on the economy, which he cannot control. Having taken responsibility for the good times, I think perhaps he was too afraid of being stuck with responsibility for the bad times despite the obvious mitigating circumstances.

What does this mean for the election?

It's still too early to put much faith in head-to-head polls but Biden is comfortably leading Trump, both nationally and in key swing states. Trump is slightly ahead in North Carolina and quite comfortably in Iowa, but in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, Florida, and even Arizona, Biden has the lead. Colorado and New Mexico do not look competitive, but Texas does.

Generic Democrats are also beating generic Republicans by around ten points. This sort of poll has limited prediction value.

None of these facts should be taken too strictly but Biden certainly starts with an advantage. We'll hopefully get some really good polling over the months to come.

Sources:
Trump approval rating - FiveThirtyEight
Generic ballot - FiveThirtyEight
Statewide polls - Real Clear Politics
Head-to-heads - Real Clear Politics

Note: RCP is a less rigorous outlet than 538, so it is more likely that they haven't accounted for partisan skew and reliability of pollsters. This could be biasing things in either direction. I don't think 538 have started properly modelling or even tracking state-level polls yet as it is too far out.

Can't remember where we were discussing the impact of COVID-19 on polling.

In late March, Trump entered his best polling position for three years, with less than 50% of Americans "disapproving" of him, and as many as 46% "approving". From memory, ASPartofMe predicted that Trump's polling would permanently improve, while XFilesGeek predicted it would quickly revert to normal. Both were reasonable predictions with some precedent.

Trump is now back to 52.5% "disapprove", which is roughly where he's been for the past two years (with the exception of January 2019 where he had a spell of unusual unpopularity, probably due to the shutdown). You could argue that his "approve" numbers, 43.5%, are slightly higher than before the rally, but I don't feel confident reading much into that.

I'd argue that Trump's strategy of attacking governors and trying to "go back to normal" has backfired. Strategically, he should have played up the threat of the virus and emphasised the need for unity. He has previously hitched his re-election campaign on the economy, which he cannot control. Having taken responsibility for the good times, I think perhaps he was too afraid of being stuck with responsibility for the bad times despite the obvious mitigating circumstances.

What does this mean for the election?

It's still too early to put much faith in head-to-head polls but Biden is comfortably leading Trump, both nationally and in key swing states. Trump is slightly ahead in North Carolina and quite comfortably in Iowa, but in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, Florida, and even Arizona, Biden has the lead. Colorado and New Mexico do not look competitive, but Texas does.

Generic Democrats are also beating generic Republicans by around ten points. This sort of poll has limited prediction value.

None of these facts should be taken too strictly but Biden certainly starts with an advantage. We'll hopefully get some really good polling over the months to come.

Sources:
Trump approval rating - FiveThirtyEight
Generic ballot - FiveThirtyEight
Statewide polls - Real Clear Politics
Head-to-heads - Real Clear Politics

Note: RCP is a less rigorous outlet than 538, so it is more likely that they haven't accounted for partisan skew and reliability of pollsters. This could be biasing things in either direction. I don't think 538 have started properly modelling or even tracking state-level polls yet as it is too far out.

During the last weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s data team was obsessed with a particular subset of voters: those who disliked both Trump and Hillary Clinton. As I reported in my book about the race, Devil’s Bargain, Trump’s analysts nicknamed this group “double haters.” They comprised about 3% to 5% of the 15 million voters the campaign believed were persuadable, but they were vexing because their intentions were difficult to discern. While their voting history indicated they would likely cast a ballot, many refused to answer pollsters’ questions or declared themselves undecided.

That is, until the final days of the campaign.

On October 28, then-FBI Director James Comey announced his intention to reopen the investigation into Clinton’s disputed emails. Immediately, the double haters made up their minds and started moving en masse toward Trump. “What we saw is that it gave them a reason to vote against her instead of voting for him,” Matt Oczkowski, a Trump campaign data scientist, said at the time. “They were finally able to admit that to pollsters without feeling any guilt.”
The Clinton campaign was also tracking double haters and, to its horror, saw the same thing. “We saw those fickle, Republican-leaning voters that we’d been successfully attracting off and on throughout the general election revert back to Trump at the end,” Brian Fallon, a top Clinton official, said then. The shift to Trump proved decisive.

Earlier this week, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found Joe Biden leading Trump 49 percent to 42 percent among registered voters—roughly the margin by which Clinton led Trump in 2016, once it was clear she’d be the Democratic nominee. NBC News shared data with me from the poll on voters who had negative opinions of both Trump and Biden: the new double haters. These voters were clear in their preference. Biden was winning them 60 percent to 10 percent.

The usual caveats apply: The election is months away; one poll doesn’t prove anything; the presidential race is hardly front and center in the news these days. On the other hand, it’s hardly a positive sign for Trump, and there are a number of reasons to think the disparity in support is real.

John Anzalone, who was a pollster for Clinton’s 2016 campaign and now polls for Biden’s campaign, says that last election, the widespread expectation that Clinton would win caused many people to stay home or cast a protest vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. The fact of Trump’s presidency, he believes, will change that. “You’re always going to have double haters because we’re a divided nation,” says Anzalone. “But it’s different this time because they’re not going to stay home or go third party with so much at stake, and a Trump presidency isn’t theoretical anymore.”
Biden also has other advantages Clinton didn’t have. Sexism won’t be a problem for him, as it was for her. He’s perceived as a moderate. He hasn’t been the focus of decades of right-wing attacks, as Clinton was. And Trump’s attacks against him over his son Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine haven’t resonated with Democratic and independent voters, who don’t find Trump to be a credible messenger. As one Democrat put it, double haters dislike Biden because he’s a Democrat—but unlike with Clinton, they don’t also think he’s the devil.

Trump’s allies have been eager to change this for more than a year, and the fact that they haven’t succeeded is the main reason why some in his campaign are itching to attack Biden as weak on China. Trump advisers I’ve spoken to say they have every expectation that they’ll eventually succeed in sowing doubts among the type of voters who now say they’ll hold their nose and vote for Biden. If so, that would turn the race for double haters into the kind of back-and-forth pendulum swing it was in 2016.

But Trump’s shaky handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his slippage in recent polls don’t suggest a turnaround is coming anytime soon. If Biden maintains a 50-point lead among double haters heading into the fall, Trump is probably toast. Even seeing that big a margin in April, a Republican close to the campaign told me, “is pretty concerning and frankly shocking.”

President Trump hasn’t been paying close attention to the advice of his public-health officials. According to the New York Times, Trump is a rare sight at the coronavirus task force meetings that precede the White House daily briefings — which could explain why the president touted injections of disinfectant as a possible coronavirus treatment on Friday.

But according to two reports on Sunday, the most publicly known doctors leading the federal COVID-19 response, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, will be sidelined in the coming weeks. The White House confirmed to Axios that the two will stay on “but take a back seat to the forward-looking, ‘what’s next’ message.”

ome form of these changes could aid Trump in several of his election-year pursuits. White House officials have advised the president that his current onscreen approach to the crisis may be hurting his standing among seniors: Recent polling has shown Joe Biden up in swing states and among voters over 65, a key demographic for Trump’s path to reelection. By decreasing his screen time — and avoiding potential repeats of Friday’s disastrous bleach bomb — advisers hope the president may be able to emulate Biden’s low-profile success. (“For the first time, I feel like he gets it that these aren’t helping him,” a source who spoke to Trump on Friday told Axios.) Pivoting to the economy will also put Trump on friendlier territory than his new ventures into public health; the robust economy during the administration’s first three years has been a fall-back rally message.

However, the prioritization of an economy-first response is a clear sign that the administration is prepared to abandon public-health expertise beyond just the onscreen presence of Birx and Fauci. And there may be more shake-ups on the way: The Wall Street Journal and Politico report that White House officials are considering replacing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

Hillary Clinton has officially thrown her support behind Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race against President Trump, who defeated Clinton in 2016.

The 2016 Democratic nominee and former secretary of state announced the endorsement in an online town hall with Biden on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on women. It's the latest high-profile endorsement racked up by the former vice president, following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday.

"Just think of what a difference it would make right now if we had a president who not only listened to the science, put facts over fiction, but brought us together, showed the kind of compassion and caring that we need from our president, and which Joe Biden has been exemplifying throughout his entire life," Clinton said.

"Think about what a difference it would make if we had a real president, not just one who played one on TV," she added, criticizing the Republican opponent who defeated her in 2016.

However, for all her remaining goodwill among Democrats, Clinton remains a polarizing figure, with many blaming her numerous political missteps and moderate voting record for failing to inspire a more robust turnout in the 2016 race.

Still, Clinton's endorsement could help consolidate Democrats around Biden, who faces many of the same criticisms weathered by Clinton in her White House pursuit. Biden considered running against Clinton in 2016, but decided against it in the wake of his son's death from cancer.

In introducing Clinton in the Tuesday town hall, Biden called his former Senate and White House colleague "my friend, the former senator, former secretary of state, and the woman who should be president."

Also on Tuesday, a number of top Sanders supporters announced the formation of a super PAC to energize progressive support for Biden. Sanders and Clinton had a particularly rancorous primary battle in 2016, the wounds of which never completely healed.

Sanders has swiftly and vocally come around to support Biden since dropping out as his main challenger in the primary, a sharp contrast to how the party remained fractured four years ago.