We are starting to see small movement to Biden among registered voters. YouGov now has Biden +1 for the first time since March (this poll was commissioned by Yahoo News). The pollster had Trump +1 a week ago. One thing to keep in mind is that the difference between Biden and Trump is within the margin of error in almost every poll. However, there are two things that often - but certainly not always - give us an idea of what’s happening in close races. First is how often one candidate rather than the other is on top. If one candidate is always coming out on top, that candidate is probably in the lead. A true toss-up should see the candidates switch positions frequently. Trump has come out on top in more polls than Biden, but Biden has done so in a lot more than you might realize from the reporting. This indicator is probably a bit of a wash right now. The second thing to watch is the directionality of movement. If the polling moves in one candidate’s direction over a few weeks, then we probably are seeing actual movement among voters towards that candidate.1 The polling average has moved steadily in Biden’s direction in the past two months, from Trump +2.1 to Trump +1.0.
Last week, we got some news that while nationwide Democratic enthusiasm might be down compared to Republican enthusiasm, it is not in battleground states. That could help Biden win the Electoral College with a close popular vote win.2 A CBS News/YouGov poll (Trump +1) found that nationally 78% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans say they will definitely vote this year. However, in battleground states the number was 87% of Democrats and 86% of Republicans. According to CBS News’ polling analyst Kabir Khanna, disengaged voters are moving towards Biden. In their March poll, Trump led these voters by double-digits. Today, they split evenly. The poll is showing movement towards Biden from Black voters and women as well.
While the post-conviction polling appears to have not moved voters much, it is still perhaps too early to see the impact. Although if — as a New York Times/Siena poll found — Trump loses one point of support, that could cost him dearly in a close election. It seems a lot of “swing” voters appear to not even know about it. We have some evidence from Republican focus groups and polling that not only are some two-time Trump voters refusing to support him, but up to 30%3 of Republican voters might move away from Trump because of the conviction. However, most of those voters are likely to come home once the choice is in front of them. But again, in a close election it might only take a very small percentage of these voters to abandon Trump to make a difference.
Tomorrow or Wednesday,4 I’ll have a post going a little deeper into why the New York court decision on line warming is more important than you might think. The end of the week post will be the second part of the labor politics series - assuming nothing timely breaks that might force me push it to a later time. Next week I am going to do something a little different and focus the posts around a topic: youth voting. We’ll look at things such as youth polling and new efforts to turnout the youth vote. I have recently co-written with my good friend Henry A.J. Ramos a multicultural youth GOTV guide for nonprofits for The Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy. It will be released at the end of next week. If you work at a nonprofit doing anything related to youth voting, you might be interested in this webinar which will (1) launch the new guide and (2) provide a Bolder Advocacy training on nonprofit activism in an election year.
Voters can move quickly to one candidate too, as they did to Reagan in the last week of the 1980 election. However, that kind of quick movement is more likely when it gets close to decision-time.
It is generally assumed that a Democratic nominee for president must win the national popular vote by a few points in order to win enough states individually to get the 270 electoral votes needed to win. If Biden wins enough battleground states to win the election while winning by smaller margins in safe states and losing by bigger margins in Trump states, it is possible that the national vote could be very close - or even that Biden could lose it - and the president would still be reelected.
This figure is more based on Nikki Haley’s vote share than polling results.
It is more likely that I will be posting on Wednesday rather than Tuesday going forward.