About those polls ...

I'm not moving to Canada yet.

Current estimated margins for Biden and Trump, based on state-level polling averages. From Sam Minter’s Election Graphs website.

Last week I was sitting in Toronto’s Pearson airport, waiting to fly home to DC. I’d had a marvelous visit with my daughter and her husband, including a weekend of birding on Lake Ontario. So many birds! Birds I’d never seen before. Birds I didn’t even know existed. We dined on vegan Asian fusion (I didn’t know that existed, either), walked around Toronto neighborhoods, and saw the cute starter home that Cynthia and Glenn are buying. As a Canadian citizen (him) and permanent resident (her), they’re making their future in Canada.

And me? At the Air Canada gate, a television played, and there he was, sickly orange and big as life, spewing vitriol, whining about his victimhood, and vowing revenge. Was that my future?

Last week brought a spate of headlines about bad polls for Biden. A controversial set of New York Times/Siena College polls showed Trump leading among registered voters in five battleground states: Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. These are reputable pollsters who’ve been accurate in the past. But the question of whether these results are significant and whether polling in general means much right now, six months out, is hotly debated. I’ll sum up two prevailing responses – yes, panic; no, don’t panic – and then suggest what we need to do.

Here’s what I need to do: more birding. This was in Sandbanks Provincial Park on Lake Ontario’s northern shore.

Yes, panic

This overstates the case, of course. Few Dem-leaning analysts are calling for panic. But many are worried. Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight, who publishes Silver Bulletin on Substack, wrote in February and March posts:

It’s no longer safe to ignore that Biden has consistently trailed Trump in polls both nationally and (more importantly) in swing states. ... Democrats are behind in presidential polls for the first time since 2004. ... And yet, blessed with a lot of runway and faced with abundant evidence that voters have soured on Biden – his approval rating is 38 percent – Democratic officials have mostly reacted with denial.

The economy has improved, but Biden’s approval ratings have not. Silver states flat-out that “Biden’s age is an enormous problem for him.” The president is doing few media interviews and even turned down an invitation to do a Superbowl interview. The White House has agreed to only two debates, while the Trump campaign wants four. All this hints that Biden’s handlers may want to minimize unscripted media encounters with a candidate who appears increasingly frail.

Silver is concerned that voters of color appear to be shifting somewhat toward the GOP. A majority of African American and Latino voters still favor Democrats, certainly, but the margin is shrinking. Dems cannot win without these voters.

Another analyst I trust is Sam Minter, whose Election Graphs website averages state-by-state polls to estimate Electoral College results. (Disclosure: Sam is my stepson.) He calculates that if the election were held today, the likely outcome is that Trump would win by 88 Electoral College votes. Luckily, the election is not today, and as Sam points out, much can happen before November. Nonetheless, all of the numbers have been tracking in Trump’s favor.

No, don’t panic

Many voices caution against reading too much into recent polls. Polls are not votes, nor even predictions of votes. Isaac Shapiro is one of the data gurus on the targeting team at NOPE, the all-volunteer group I work with. He notes:

The polls are quite close (and have become slightly closer) in the three most critical battleground states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – and are moderately close in Arizona. Such modest margins can be overcome. Developments between now and November could change the direction of the election. Plus, as we have all learned, even polls taken right before an election can be wrong. Polls taken six months before Election Day are especially unlikely to be precise predictors.

Trump has an unshakeable base, but scant room to grow. While Biden’s approval rating is a dismal 38% and his disapproval rating 55%, Trump’s numbers are only slightly better. Majorities of voters dislike both candidates. Trump’s fundraising is going to pay legal bills instead of campaign expenses, and he’s spending most of his time in courtrooms. The GOP is riddled by infighting and has an unpopular position on abortion rights. In the 2022 midterms and in special elections since 2020, voters rejected MAGA candidates, and MAGA has only grown more extreme since then.

For more arguments along these lines, see The Big Picture and Jay Kuo and Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles on Substack.

My take

Biden definitely can still win. Am I confident that he will? No, I am not.

Dems have a Biden problem. I don’t know why he attracts such widespread scorn when many of his policies, at least his domestic policies, are popular. But there seems to be an appetite in this country for “strong” leadership that embodies and performs white male dominance (or maybe just male dominance, since we did have Obama). Trump performs dominance through boasting, self-aggrandizement, shameless lying, threats, cruelty, and humiliation of others, and he is on the front page every day. Biden, by contrast, often seems to be barely present.

Let me say that I will absolutely vote for Biden, in case that is not already clear. In a Biden second term, we can build on gains in areas like clean energy, infrastructure, unionization, wages, tax fairness, and health care costs. In a Trump second term, we will lose nearly everything all at once. It will be four years of doing damage control and fighting a slide into autocracy. Bernie Sanders sums up:

Biden is not popular and many progressives, including me, strongly disagree with his policies regarding Israel and this disastrous war in Gaza. But, let’s be clear. Biden is not running against God. He is running against Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in American history whose second term, if he is reelected, will be worse than his first. And, on his worst day, Biden is a thousand times better than Trump.

Biden often looks better than he sounds these days, but he has enacted some good domestic policies. And stopping Trump is paramount.

A Midwest-focused strategy

“Democrats should face no illusions about the task ahead of them,” Nate Silver warns. He explains that Biden’s path to winning runs through the Midwest:

While he's trailing in the most competitive states, Biden remains within striking distance of Trump in states with just enough electoral votes to hand him the presidency. Seven states are generally considered to be competitive this fall, and when you look at our polling averages of each of them, six of them fall into two clean categories: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Biden trails Trump by less than 2 points; and Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, where Trump leads by a more comfortable 6- or 7-point margin. (Arizona, at Trump +3.5, is somewhere in the middle.) [There’s] a narrow but feasible path for Biden to win. If he carries Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, plus every other state and district that he won by at least 6 points in 2020, he would finish with exactly 270 electoral votes.

In sync with this analysis, NOPE’s Isaac Shapiro suggests concentrating time, energy, and funds on Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and then Arizona. He also calls for close attention to House races. If Trump wins, his ability to wreak havoc will be greatly constrained if Democrats still control at least one chamber of Congress. And chances of retaking the House look pretty good.

Time for the ground game

Getting out the vote through door-to-door canvassing, phoning, texting, and letter writing; supporting grassroots groups that are mobilizing voters in communities of color; registering new voters and staffing voter assistance hotlines – these strategies work, and Dems do them well. NOPE’s mantra (admittedly not original) is: do more, worry less. And it’s true. When I’m knocking on doors, I’m in a worry-free zone. I don’t have mental space to ponder the horror of a Trump restoration or, for that matter, the challenges progressives will face in a Biden second term.

So I’m not fleeing to Canada – not now, and probably not ever. Even if Canada would take me, which is dubious, my work here is not done. I’ll share evolving strategy in this space as we approach November. Meanwhile, please consider signing up for NOPE’s Weekly Update. The newsletter, which I co-edit, offers a menu of strategically targeted volunteer and donation opportunities. We’ve got two Pennsylvania canvasses, an Arizona phone bank, and letter writing to battleground state voters, and that’s just for May. There’s much more to come. Can it succeed? It can. It must.