I’m a DNC Member and a Public Opinion Professional. It’s Highly Unlikely Biden Can Win
Only one person can build on the administration’s accomplishments, have unfettered access to funds and ballot lines, and do so without wasting precious time. Her name is Kamala Harris.
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Nothing is more important than defeating Donald Trump this November. The fate of America’s democracy, women’s rights, and marginalized communities is at stake, as is the global ecosystem and the struggle of free people worldwide against authoritarianism. This is truly the most important election of our lifetimes.
No individual ego or coalition can take priority over this existential struggle. Factional differences between left and center-left and the ambitions of individual politicians must be put aside, as leftists and moderates in France and Great Britain did this month. Meeting the challenge requires flexibility and a clear-eyed examination of electoral realities.
Unfortunately, it is highly doubtful that President Biden can defeat Donald Trump.
President Biden has had a remarkably successful presidency, especially given the mess that Trump left him in January 2021—a month when the economy was still reeling from the pandemic, no plan existed to distribute vaccines, and an insurrection scarred the Capitol. Biden’s administration has improved the lives of millions of Americans. He has not received the credit he is due for those accomplishments. But elections are about the future, not the past.
Blaming the media or closing ranks against critics will not change the trajectory of the presidential race. Pointing to the dangers of Project 2025, the destructiveness of Republican policies, or Trump’s immorality and unfitness for the presidency won’t be enough to overcome the incumbent’s liabilities.
Biden defenders claim that public opinion will shift after Labor Day. They say Biden overperforms the polls, and the administration’s record of accomplishments will sway the public once the message gets out. “Middle-Class Joe” has a unique connection to and understanding of voters that “elites” and “pundits” always underestimate, they argue. But none of these arguments survive scrutiny. Here’s the evidence:
1) The polling is dire. The current national polling average shows Trump leading Biden by 2.4 points nationally, according to FiveThirtyEight, and 3.4 points per RealClearPolitics (which gives more weight to GOP-friendly pollsters.) This is Trump’s widest national lead of the campaign, and he had held a steady lead all year except for a brief period in June when Biden held less than half a point’s advantage.
This deficit might seem surmountable, but America’s rigged system gives more weight to conservative voters via the Electoral College—and battleground state polling is considerably more ominous for the Democratic president. Taking only the more generous FiveThirtyEight averages, Biden trails by 4.7 percent in Arizona, 5.4 percent in Georgia, 0.7 percent in Michigan, 5.1 percent in Nevada, 3.5 percent in Pennsylvania, 6.5 percent in North Carolina, and 1.5 percent in Wisconsin. Biden’s lead is a precarious 0.9 percent in Minnesota; one recent poll shows him trailing even in New Hampshire by 2 points. Lisa Desjardins of PBS NewsHour is reporting per multiple internal sources that there is new internal polling showing “serious, growing issues” in Minnesota, Virginia (!), New Mexico (!!), and Wisconsin.
Were the election held today, Trump would waltz into the White House with 312 electoral votes and become the first Republican candidate to win the national popular vote in 20 years.
But even these grim surveys understate the peril. Biden’s approval rating stands at an abysmal 37 percent. It has never crept higher than 43 percent since October 2021. No president or his party has ever been re-elected in the modern era with less than 50 percent approval. Lyndon Johnson bowed out with a 49 percent approval rating, and that fall, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, got far fewer votes than the combined totals of Richard Nixon and George Wallace. In 1992, Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, despite the then-vice president’s 56 percent approval rating. Like this year’s, that election featured a conspiracy-minded third-party candidate who drew nearly equal support from both sides. George W. Bush had a 34 percent approval before seeing Barack Obama obliterate John McCain in 2008. Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump were ousted handily after one term, each with a 34-percent approval rating. If Biden were to win re-election with these numbers, he would defy history.
It’s not a good bet. Lest Trump’s negative approval offer solace, the latest USA Today poll shows that voters remember his presidency with amnesiac fondness: 51 percent now approve of Trump’s presidency in retrospect, while only 41 percent approve of Biden’s. If Trump’s personal character were not so odious, Biden’s electoral prospects would likely be far worse—which would explain why Nikki Haley opened up a shocking 13-point lead over Biden in head-to-head matchups.
This is a Biden problem specifically, not a Democratic brand problem. Democratic candidates did surprisingly well in the 2022 midterms and have overperformed in special elections. But Biden is underpolling Democratic candidates in key swing states by anywhere from 4 to 13 points. Either the election will feature split-ticket voting unprecedented in the modern era, or the president will, in time, be a drag on House and Senate Democrats, costing the party both chambers and allowing Trump’s despotic impulses to go unchecked. The Supreme Court’s recent decision giving presidents widespread immunity only makes the situation more perilous.
2) There is no reason to believe Biden’s standing with voters will improve. There are many reasons to think it will get much worse. The Biden campaign maintains that voters aren’t paying close attention yet and that the president’s numbers will improve after Labor Day. But there is zero evidence for this proposition. Hillary Clinton did not significantly improve her position against Trump between early July and November 2016, nor did Biden’s polling dramatically improve against Trump between early July and November 2020. Perhaps more than in any other American presidential election, the two major nominees are known quantities.
On the flip side, undercurrents threaten to sink Biden further.
Voters’ concerns about Biden’s age are nothing new. But his debate performance reinforced their biggest fears about him, nor is anything from here until November likely to alter those perceptions. Every wandering thought and verbal miscue will spawn a new media feeding frenzy. It will be amplified repeatedly on social media. Voters who will decide the election—the so-called “double haters” who despise both candidates and the less attuned and less reliable voters who get their information primarily from TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram—would ideally pick a president based on policies and performance. Unfortunately, history shows they tend to vote based on more superficial personal characteristics. Wishing it were otherwise is not a strategy.
3) Biden and allied groups have dominated the airwaves in swing states to little effect. Republicans are about to equalize with fury. Spending by Democrats and their Super PAC allies in battleground states has dwarfed that of Trump and his allies. Over the past 30 days alone, the advertising disparities are shocking: Team Blue spent $7.6 million to Team Red’s $59,000 in Wisconsin. In Nevada, liberals outspent conservatives on the air by $6.2 million to $83,000. This outlandish difference may have contributed to Biden’s slight uptick before the debate, but not nearly by the margins one might have given the size of the buys.
Democrats held a significant financial advantage during the first half of 2024. That edge disappeared after Trump’s convictions. Republicans report a cash advantage over Democrats of $172 million to $157 million.
Republicans will soon launch a massive advertising blitz in battleground states where Democrats largely had the field to themselves (with little or nothing to show). They will attack his biggest vulnerabilities and replay his errors. It is hard to see Biden’s numbers improving over the coming months in this advertising environment. It is easy to see them crater.
4) Biden’s team scheduled an early debate to reset the campaign. The move backfired. Even knowing their candidate’s challenges, the Biden team wanted an early debate against Trump. One of two things must be true: either Biden’s team is guilty of colossal incompetence in prepping the President and misreading how the debate would go, or they were desperate enough to throw the dice and pray for the best.
Either way, the moment to change the narrative has come and gone, and the situation is dire. Another debate isn’t likely to help. Nothing within the campaign’s control can shift the numbers.
5) No, Biden has not overperformed his polling. His backers say that Biden overperforms his poll numbers, but this is simply not the case. The Senator from Delaware was quickly dispatched in his 1988 and 2008 presidential campaigns. He owes his presidency to his selection as Vice President. In July 2020, Biden led Trump in national polling averages by 9 points. The final election poll averages from November 2020 indicated that Biden would win the popular vote by 8 points, with 348 electoral college votes. The final result was that President Biden garnered about half of his forecasted total: a squeaker 4.4 percent victory with 304 electoral votes that tiny shifts in the swing states could have undone. He underperformed the polls by almost 50 percent.
Nor did Biden overperform his 2020 Democratic primary polling. His final Iowa caucus was 1.3 points behind the lauded Selzer poll, and the New Hampshire poll overstated his results by 2.6 points. In fairness, he beat Nevada’s polling average by 1.5 points.
True, Biden dramatically overperformed his polling in South Carolina in 2020, but there is a reason that can’t be replicated. After losing in the first three nominating contests—New Hampshire, Iowa, and Nevada—Biden’s numbers, even in his firewall state of South Carolina, were cratering, and his advantage fell as low as 6 points. Then Representative Jim Clyburn came to the rescue, endorsing him four days before the South Carolina primary and signaling party leaders’ support. Leadership encouraged Pete Buttigieg, Mike Bloomberg, and Amy Klobuchar to exit the race before Super Tuesday and endorse Biden as well, signaling who should be the nominee. The rest is history, but it does not speak to any preternatural political abilities from Biden or the coterie of advisors who have been with him for decades.
6) Democrats’ overperformance in the 2022 midterms and 2023 special elections likely will not repeat. Biden said after the debate that he beat the polls in 2022 and special elections after that and, therefore, would do so again in 2024. Many Democrats place their hopes in this notion that the polls are wrong and that anti-Trump voters will flood the voting booths.
But the polls were not wrong in 2022; they were historically accurate. The “red wave” pundits predicted in the midterm were based on vibes, not on hard data. Democrats have outperformed polling in special elections over the last two years, but this trend will not necessarily apply to a general election. Democrats have done better in special elections where turnout is higher, but their big advantage is that they are among the most reliable voters and have far less traction with less frequent voters. Trump did not underperform his poll numbers in 2016 or 2020. It would be political malpractice to assume he will underperform in 2024. Rosy forecasts that depend on historical models are also of little use in this unprecedented environment.
So, what now?
If Biden remains the presumptive nominee, there should be a campaign shakeup at the very least. The strategies of the last six months have been wildly unsuccessful. Doing the same thing with the same personnel and expecting a different result is insanity we can’t afford.
If Biden does conclude that a second term is out of reach, Democrats must coalesce around the only successor who can trade on the administration’s accomplishments, freely utilize campaign resources, prosecute Trump’s racism and sexism, and provide a much-needed jolt to the campaign: Vice President Kamala Harris. The party cannot afford weeks of internecine strife, misspent resources, and the bruised feelings of an open convention or half-baked mini-primary.
Everyone—including the president, who has done so much for the country—has a moral obligation to make the sacrifices that ensure Donald Trump’s defeat.
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