The primaries are still showing that Trump is weaker and Biden is stronger than most reporting would have you believe. Whether in open, closed, or partially closed primaries, around 15% of Republican voters are choosing Nikki Haley and one or two other candidates who have also dropped out of the race. Biden is seeing principled, but mostly statement-making opposition in the primaries. However, even this opposition is smaller than what Trump is seeing. Trump’s margin of victory is typically around 70 points while Biden’s is around 80. And there is more reason to believe that those voting against Trump will not support him in the general election than the same will happen for Biden.
Wisconsin held its presidential primary yesterday. It’s an interesting case of what might be shaping up for November. Biden won 35,000 more votes than Trump did. Slightly more voters participated in the Republican primary than in the Democratic primary, but that might be deceptive. I could not find any exit polling for this race, but Wisconsin has an open primary system. This means that any registered voter can vote in any primary (but only one primary, of course). Considering what we have seen in other open primary states thus far, a small but non-negligible portion of the anti-Trump vote in the Republican primary has come from cross-over Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. We have seen, nor heard, of similar Republican voters crossing over to open Democratic primaries in this cycle. This could signal that more Democratic-leaning voters (whether party members or independents) actually voted in Wisconsin yesterday.
The latest general election polling in Wisconsin was conducted by Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio for the Wall Street Journal a week ago. He has the race tied head to head, Biden +1 with Jill Stein and another minor candidate and Biden +3 when Robert Kennedy and Cornel West are added. That is really bad news for Trump. The operating assumption in the media - and from a lot of Democrats - is that these minor party and independent candidates are going to take votes away from Biden. It certainly looks differently in this Wisconsin poll. This may be why the Trump has recently started attacking Kennedy. He draws 10% of the vote in this poll, most of it seemingly coming out of Trump’s support. It appears that Kennedy takes a good deal of support from Stein voters as well, although her support is small to begin with.
Wisconsin is likely a must-win state for both major party candidates. It’s actually harder to see how Trump wins without Wisconsin than Biden on the math alone. However, elections tend to have patterns. For instance, when we see several toss-up Senate races down to the wire in November, they almost always break to one party. It’s unlikely that Biden would win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, but not Wisconsin. It’s absolutely possible, to be clear, but not likely. And Biden does need to win those other states.1 The media coverage of the election so far would make one think that Biden cannot lose Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina and win the election, but he absolutely can – and he very well might.2 However, there is no plausible electoral math in which Trump loses North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia and wins the election. Again, it is possible, but highly unlikely.
What’s really interesting about the Wisconsin primary is how many people are coming out to vote for Biden, an incumbent president who has faced no significant opposition. We know that Trump voters and anti-Trump voters are particularly enthusiastic - and they are both likely to vote as long as Trump is on the ballot even if he has already won the nomination. The same cannot really be said for Biden. The uncommitted protest voters seem more enthusiastic than the voters for the president, but even so Biden is winning by bigger margins than Trump is. Why did so many more people turn out to vote for Biden than for Trump in Wisconsin? Maybe he has more support among people who are actually going to vote in November than the polling suggests right now. That would certainly be consistent with what we have seen in election results nearly everywhere since 2020.
Fabizio’s polling has Trump leading in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Note that for polling it is still early. As a result, this is yet another poll that doesn’t even try to model the likely voter electorate. It is a survey of registered voters.
However, I think – absent Republican plans to steal the election, which are very real but the not the subject of this post – Biden will win Arizona.