On the menu today: A slew of new polls show really good news for Republicans, a little bit of fine print on those surveys, and an update on the very-much-in-flux presidential debate schedule.
Everything’s Coming Up Roses!
Earlier this week, Morning Consult released poll numbers that showed Amy Coney Barrett made a terrific first impression and that public support for her confirmation to the Supreme Court was solid and growing:
Democrats are losing the Supreme Court messaging war, new polling indicates, with support for Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation trending in the GOP’s direction.
Nearly half (46 percent) of voters in an Oct. 2-4 Morning Consult/Politico poll said the Senate should confirm Barrett — up 9 percentage points since President Donald Trump announced her nomination on Sept. 26 — as more voters say the chamber should consider her elevation to the high court as soon as possible, regardless of who wins next month’s election.
The share of voters who said the Senate should reject her nomination dropped 3 points, to 31 percent, from polling conducted on Sept. 26. Both polls were conducted among roughly 2,000 registered voters each, with 2-point margins of error.
Seventy-seven percent of GOP voters back Barrett’s confirmation, up 6 points from late last month. Among independents, the share who said she should be confirmed increased 8 points, to 36 percent, while the share of Democratic voters who said she should be confirmed increased 10 points, to 24 percent.
Meanwhile, Gallup finds “a clear majority of registered voters, 56 percent, saying they are better off now than they were four years ago, while 32 percent said they are worse off.” Considering the pandemic and its economic-related troubles, and the protests and violence of the summer, that’s a fantastic figure for an incumbent president. The 56 percent saying they’re better off now than four years earlier is better than the 45 percent in 2012 (when Barack Obama was reelected), the 47 percent in 2004 (when George W. Bush was reelected), and the 44 percent in 1984 (when President Reagan was reelected in a landslide).
Gallup also found that 49 percent of registered voters said they agree with Donald Trump more on issues, compared to 46 percent who said the same about Joe Biden.
The latest poll from the Pew Research Center found 50 percent of registered voters think President Trump is “mentally sharp” — while only 46 percent say they believe Joe Biden was mentally sharp. The survey found 69 percent say the president stands up for what he believes in, and 52 percent were very or somewhat confident that Trump would make good decisions on economic policy.
And in a recent Emerson poll of likely voters Michigan, Trump supporters seem considerably more enthusiastic than Biden supporters: “Amongst those who support Biden, 43 percent report being extremely excited to support him, 25 percent as very excited, 20 percent as mildly excited, and 13 percent as not that excited. As for the President’s supporters, 63 percent report being extremely excited, 16 percent very excited, 14 percent mildly excited, and 7 percent not that excited.”
The Saint Anselm College Survey Center poll of 1,147 New Hampshire likely voters finds GOP governor Chris Sununu remains very popular, with a 65 percent to 34 percent favorable image, a 68 percent to 31 percent job approval, and on his way to a blowout win over his Democratic opponent, Feltes, by a margin of 58 percent to 35 percent.
Meanwhile, down in Georgia, the hopes of Democrats that they can turn the David Perdue-Jon Ossoff Senate race into a competitive race appear to be fading. The incumbent Republican Perdue leads Ossoff, 49 percent to 41 percent, in the latest University of Georgia poll. In the state’s other U.S. Senate race this year, if no candidate reaches 50 percent, the top two finishers, regardless of party, head to a runoff. Democrat Raphael Warnock is at 28 percent, while two Republicans, Senator Kelly Loeffler and Representative Doug Collins are at 22 percent and 21 percent, respectively. Republicans feel reasonably confident about their chances of prevailing in a post-November 3 runoff.
[Fun experiment: see how many people stop reading right about here.]
But the polls are always wrong, I’m frequently told. The overwhelming majority of pollsters either don’t include enough Trump supporters and Republicans in their samples, or they deliberately skew their samples to depress those groups. Polls are more or less propaganda for Democrats, designed to fire up their side and demoralize their opponents. Many people tell me this with great confidence, and they know it to be so because a pollster has never called them.
It turns out that all of the above pollsters that had some good news for Republicans also found some bad news — in some cases, some seriously bad news.
Morning Consult’s tracking poll — among 17,294 likely voters! — found Trump trailing Biden by 9 points, 52 percent to 43 percent nationally. A survey released this morning found 64 percent supported making the next debate virtual, while only 26 percent disapproved, and that 51 percent opposed Trump skipping the virtual debate, while 35 percent approved.
Gallup polling also found that 58 percent of Americans think President Trump is disseminating “a great deal of misinformation,” with another 11 percent saying it’s “a fair amount.” When asked about Biden, 30 percent said the Democratic nominee was spreading a “a great deal of misinformation,” with another 19 percent saying it’s “a fair amount.”
The poll from the Pew Research Center also found Biden ahead nationally, 52 percent to 42 percent. What’s more, among those who didn’t vote for either Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016, Biden leads, 49 percent to 26 percent. The survey finds registered voters have more faith in Biden to bring the country together, handle the coronavirus outbreak, make good decisions in foreign policy, select good nominees to the Supreme Court, and handle law-enforcement and criminal-justice issues.
That Emerson poll of Michigan likely voters found 52 percent of voters plan to support Biden, 42 percent intend to vote for Trump, 2 percent plan to vote for another candidate, and 3 percent remain undecided at this point. They also found Democratic senator Gary Peters ahead of GOP challenger John James, 51 percent to 41 percent.
And that University of Georgia poll that had such good news for David Perdue also finds Trump barely ahead of Biden in the Peach State, 47.5 percent to 46.4 percent.
But remember, all of those bad numbers for Trump are just skewed samples and the pollster’s anti-Republican bias, a bias that apparently the pollsters just forgot about when asking about Amy Coney Barrett, whether the respondent is better off now than four years ago, which candidate is mentally sharp, which candidate’s supporters are more enthusiastic for their selection, the New Hampshire gubernatorial race, or the Georgia Senate race.
Because if the pollsters weren’t all secretly conspiring to make the president’s public support look worse than it is . . . why, that would mean that his flaws, behavior, statements, and actions drive his public support down, even in circumstances where other presidents would benefit.
Debate Schedule Update
Remember, not that long ago, when the debates were how Trump was going to roar ahead in this race? During the presidential primary, we witnessed Joe Biden have some pretty good nights and also have some not-so-good nights. While the claim that he was senile or the prediction that he would drool on himself were always exaggerations, Biden had enough moments of lost trains of thought, seeming confusion, and word-salad answers to make Democrats nervous. It was not difficult to imagine a scenario where Biden froze or seriously stumbled and left the electorate doubting he could handle the job. There was a reason so many Democrats spent August urging Biden to not participate.
But then, in that first debate, Trump came out with such thundering bluster and relentless, constant interruptions that Biden rarely had a moment to look bad. The most dangerous sound for Biden would be silence, a sign he’s struggling to find the words. Instead, Trump filled every moment, heckling, hectoring, shouting, and jeering. Even if you loved Trump’s approach, absolutely nothing indicates that approach achieved what Trump needed it to do: expand the number of people who want to vote for him.
And then Trump tested positive for coronavirus. It is likely Trump was already infected with the coronavirus at the debate; if he had tested negative after the September 29 debate, the White House medical office would have told us by now. (President Trump told Maria Bartiromo yesterday that he may have contracted the virus at a September 27 event at the White House with Gold Star families.) The Cleveland Clinic had testing on-site, but the president arrived late, and the assumption was that he had already tested negative in a recent test administered by the White House.
The Commission on Presidential Debates, having had one debate where a participant was infected, now wants to hold the next one virtually — with the candidates appearing remotely from separate locations. They reached this decision entirely because of the decisions and actions of the president. If the president of the United States wants to get tested every day, he will get tested every day. If the president does not want to get tested daily, he will not get tested daily.
Then Trump announced he wouldn’t participate in a virtual debate. (If you believe that Trump is capable of walloping Biden in an in-person debate, he should be able to wallop him in a virtual debate. Even if Biden has a teleprompter, if you’ve got the better and more compelling argument, you’ve got the better and more compelling argument.)
Then the Biden campaign announced they wouldn’t participate, either, scheduling a prime-time event with former Bill Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos on the Disney-owned ABC television network. The Trump campaign’s counter-proposal — move each debate back a week, and then hold them in person, is reasonable. But now the Biden camp says the October 22 debate should be the last one of the campaign — meaning we would have only two presidential debates.
Republicans will accuse Biden of ducking the debates, but Biden can now accurately say Trump pulled out of the debates first. I thought the point was to get Trump and Biden debating as much as possible, because the contrast was such a natural advantage to the president.
ADDENDUM: Kevin Williamson, assessing the predictions of a Trump landslide victory in some corners of the conservative media: “If conservatives expecting a Trump landslide find themselves grumbling disconsolately into their oatmeal on the morning of November 4, then they might ask themselves why so many of their most influential media figures lied to them, what was gained by those lies, and what was lost by them.”
Comments