There’s some truth to that. But that overlooks something important that doesn’t get much attention. Polls show that Biden’s ceiling is actually lower than Trump’s.
There’s been a lot of talk about “never Trump” Republicans, but it appears, at least for now, that there are even more “never Biden” voters out there.
In 2020, the opposite was true. Every time the question was asked, the percentage who said they would never vote for Trump outnumbered those who said they would never vote for Biden by double digits.
In many cases, at least 50% of voters said they not only would not vote for Trump, but were unlikely to vote for him. At most, only 4 in 10 said the same about Biden.
The latest poll to show this is Monday’s New York Times/Siena College poll of six key battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Across those states, 46% of registered voters said they were unlikely to vote for Trump, and 52% said the same for Biden.
This is the largest difference ever, including an earlier Times poll and last month’s CNN poll. But all of these polls in recent months show that there are more “never for Biden” voters than “never for Trump,” although the margins are small.
And in three out of four such polls since November, majorities of voters say they will never vote for Biden, just as they did for Trump in 2020.
Part of that is because voters like the idea of reelecting Trump as president.
As previously noted, retrospective assessments of Trump’s presidency are better than they were at nearly any point during his actual presidency, a phenomenon critics have dubbed “Trump amnesia.” ing. His CNN poll mentioned above is a good example. Fifty-five percent rated Trump a “failure” at the end of his term, but 55% now rate it a “success.”
So it’s no surprise that the percentage of voters who don’t support Trump has dropped from just over 50 percent to the mid-to-high 40s.
But it’s also true that Biden doesn’t seem like a viable option to many voters at this point — as much as a majority, and certainly more than in 2020. The same CNN poll showed that 61 percent thought of his presidency thus far. For example, “failure”.
The high number of “no chance” for Biden puts the president in a position to benefit if third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fade over time (as they often do). It undermined another common trend in perhaps overly optimistic Democratic thinking: that there is.
While recent data suggests that the Kennedy factor is drawing more from Trump than from Biden, some on the left believe that a third-party candidate like him is completely detrimental to Biden. claims. reason? These lower the bar for Trump to win, but he (again) has not been able to prove he can win even 47 percent.
But for now, Trump’s ceiling doesn’t actually seem that low. Across the six states surveyed by the Times, the race is a close one with Biden at 49%.
Biden’s ceiling, on the other hand, certainly seems that low. And that suggests he has a lot more to do than simply rallying his forces against a common enemy.
