Big Moments
The time to fish or hang up is fast approaching for President Biden and the Democratic Party, and the events of the past two days have only deepened their dilemma. Call it “purgatory” or “the in-between state,” but the Democrats are in it.
On the one hand, a significant and growing number of Democrats (22 as of Friday afternoon) have called for Biden to withdraw, citing concerns about his ability to campaign and perform his job, and many more are even suggestively questioning whether Biden can win.
Meanwhile, Biden managed to calm some jittery Democrats with a largely productive hour-long press conference Thursday night (apart from a few high-profile gaffes). It’s interesting that the expected cascade of congressional defections didn’t occur 24 hours after the press conference, though much of the drama has been unfolding behind closed doors.
And now, new polls, including one from The Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos, suggest the race is less shaken than previously thought and remains tightly contested, especially nationwide. Biden and Donald Trump’s head-to-head performances are Up An NPR/PBS/Marist College poll conducted Friday gave him a slight lead by a statistically insignificant 2-point margin.
Given all this, I think it’s a good time to take a look at The Washington Post’s fantastic new polling averages tool (please bookmark, share and discuss it) to see what the more complete data actually says about where we stand.
The most significant finding is that Biden’s lead in support has widened by an average of 1.9 percentage points in 10 high-quality polls conducted before and after the debate two weeks ago — from less than a percentage point previously to a 2.6-point lead in those polls.
All of these changes are within the margin of error, but it’s clear from the numerous polls we have available that Biden has lost at least some support since his politically shocking performance in the debate two weeks ago.
Additionally, the president’s approval rating dropped in eight of the ten polls. The Marist poll was the only one in which the president’s approval rating increased. The CNN poll showed no change in the race, but that was after the president was already trailing by six points, a fairly large margin at the time. (This may suggest that the CNN pre-debate poll was a bit of an outlier.)
But Biden teeth He fares slightly better in the Washington Post polling average, which compiles all eligible polls, not just those taken before and after the debate, which has Trump trailing by one point.
Polls also show that concerns about Biden are changing, even if the margins haven’t changed much. For example, the Post-ABC-Ipsos poll is relatively good for Biden, showing a tie. But more than eight in 10 voters say Biden is too old, a higher number than most past polls. Also, 56% of Democrats say Biden should step aside. The share of voters who say Biden is smarter than Trump has dropped significantly, to just 14%. Half of independents say the debate made them view Biden worse, and few have become more favorable.
And of course, even if the race was that close nationally, it’s a bit of an illusion, because to win the presidency, Democrats need to win the popular vote by a few points.
Recall that in 2016, Democrats won the popular vote by 2 points but lost the Electoral College vote. And in 2020, Biden won the nation by 4.5 points but won three crucial states — Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — by less than 0.6 points. Shifting the electoral college by just 1 point to the right in 2020 would give Trump a win.
(In fact, many people don’t realize just how close this race actually was. My favorite statistic is that Trump needed just 43,000 votes in these three states to win, and just 90,000 votes overall to win not only the presidency, but both the House and the Senate.)
These two sets of results essentially suggest that Democrats would need to have a national lead of around 3-4 points to actually “win.” Unfortunately, there is very little quality post-debate data from battleground states where Biden is trailing.
That’s why any slight but definite shift in Biden’s favor would be so troubling for Democrats. After all, Biden was already behind, and now he appears to be further behind: Polls suggest his approval rating has fallen by more than five points since the much closer 2020 election.
There’s an important caveat here.
Polls are off by a few points across the board, as they always have been, and Biden may actually be doing better — polling has become increasingly difficult lately. (Of course, it’s also possible Biden is doing worse; Trump outperformed the polls in both 2016 and 2020.)
And it could also be the fact that Biden’s two most recent and highest quality polls, the Post-ABC-Ipsos and Marist polls, are on the cutting edge of the race reverting to the mean. These are the two most recent polls, so it could be that Biden’s support temporarily cooled during the debate, but is now thawing a bit and the race is returning to “normal.”
Either way, the right call for Biden and the Democrats isn’t as clear-cut as it seemed just a few days ago. And Biden has a compelling point to make, at least to buy himself some time. The ideal outcome for nervous Democrats would have been either no effect (in which case Biden stays in) or big change (in which case Biden is obviously gone). They’re basically right in the middle of those two outcomes.
(In the meantime, keep an eye on our poll averages, which are updated with all the key data.)
Important Quotes
“Like most of the people I represent in Southwest Washington, I have doubts about the president’s health, his ability to do his job, and his judgment about whether it is the president himself, and not his elected advisers, who should be making important decisions about the country. … This crisis of confidence in the president’s leadership must end. He must do what he knows is right for the country and put the national interest first.”
– Rep. Marie Grusenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) issued a statement before Biden’s press conference on Thursday suggesting that Biden should not only withdraw but resign — one of the strongest statements made by a Democrat to date.
