That grim NYT poll hints at a big opportunity for Biden
He's not winning right now. But he has a path (and time) to change that.
PN is a reader-supported publication made possible by paid subscribers. Appreciate our independent journalism? Then please sign up to support us.
The new NYT/Siena poll of battleground states has generated lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth this week, at least among those of us holding out hope that this won’t be our last free and fair presidential election. It indicates that if voting happened right now, Trump would win.
Coming on the heels of a two-month stretch in which Biden seemed to pull even with Trump, the poll shows Trump narrowly ahead in Pennsylvania and with comfortable leads in Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, and Nevada. The only state polled where Biden is ahead is Wisconsin. It’s sobering stuff.
Even if other recent polls show a tighter race, there’s no getting around the fact that this is not good news for Biden and for democracy. But a closer look at some of the findings provides reasons for hope, especially considering Biden’s big money advantage and the fact we’re still nearly six months out from Election Day.
Perhaps the biggest reason for optimism is what the poll indicates about how voters are thinking (or not thinking) about Trump’s presidency. When a sample of registered voters was asked what one thing they remember most from Trump’s term in office, 39 percent said his behavior, and 24 percent said the economy. Only 5 percent said the main thing they remembered was the coup attempt on January 6. Even more shockingly, only 4 percent said they remembered the covid pandemic, which was the largest national disaster in at least a century and killed more than 1.1 million people in the US.
Voters have short memories. That seems likely to help Trump, who stands to benefit if his disastrous presidency is forgotten.
At the same time, the details of the NYT poll suggest that, while voters may not remember specifics, they do remember that they are not fond of Trump overall. And their responses about abortion rights, in particular, confirm that Dobbs and the repeal of abortion rights remains a major problem for Republicans in general and Trump in particular.
How can you not remember?!
It seems incredible that people don’t remember the most shocking events of Trump’s presidency from only a few years ago. But as political scientist John Sides told the Times, people respond to questions about the past through the lens of what’s important to them right now.
“It’s the salience of issues today that color the memories that people have of Trump,” Sides said.
In other words, even though covid infections continue to be a real threat, the pandemic is no longer dominating the news, so people don’t see it as pressing or important. January 6 and the coup attempt were hugely important in 2021, but again, they’re not top of mind for many in May 2024.
In contrast, the economy and Trump’s disturbing actions and statements continue to be a subject of daily discussion. People project their current priorities onto the past. When they answer the question “What do you remember?” they aren’t really telling you what they remember; they’re telling you what they’re thinking about and what’s in the news now.
There are many indications, though, that if you phrase the question somewhat differently, people do in fact remember Trump and what he stands for. For instance, when NYT asked voters in last month’s survey “Do you think that Donald Trump has or has not committed any serious federal crimes?” 54 percent of registered voters surveyed said he had; only 37 percent said he had not.
The results are obviously strongly skewed by party ID; Democrats said Trump had committed serious federal crimes 88/7 percent. But independents also thought Trump had committed serious federal crimes 52/38 percent. And even 19 percent of Republicans thought his crimes were serious, compared to 72 percent who did not.
A note from Aaron: Working with brilliant contributors like Noah requires resources. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, please click the button below to support our work.
Similarly, respondents believed Trump’s actions after the 2020 election “threatened American democracy” by 51/43 percent; independents thought Trump had threatened democracy 50/44 percent. When asked if Trump had ever said anything they found offensive, 38 percent of respondents said he had recently, and 33 percent said he had, but not recently.
Again, there’s a major partisan break, but even 45 percent of Republicans acknowledged that Trump had said something they found offensive at some point. That suggests respondents do remember Trump’s offensive past comments — or, just as importantly, it suggests voters see Trump as someone who regularly says offensive things.
People remember Dobbs
The NYT polling on abortion is an especially interesting example of very selective and partisan amnesia.
The just-released poll asked, “Who do you think is most responsible for the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to an abortion: Joe Biden or Donald Trump?” Likely voters responded overwhelmingly by (correctly) blaming Trump; 59 percent said he bore a lot of or some responsibility for the repeal of constitutional abortion rights. Only 15 percent said Biden bore some or a lot of responsibility.
Informed voters are likely to be aghast that anyone thinks Biden was responsible for Dobbs. But a lot of voters just don’t pay attention to politics at all, and the impulse to blame the president when things go wrong is quite strong regardless of whether they deserve it. From that standpoint, you could argue it’s actually surprising that the “blame Biden” numbers here are so low.
What’s interesting here, though, is who blamed Biden. Only 11 percent of Democrats said Biden bore some or a lot of responsibility for Dobbs. In contrast, almost twice as many Republicans did (21 percent).
Of course, Republicans tend to blame Democrats for everything that goes wrong. But, crucially, in theory, Republicans wanted abortion rights repealed. They should want to credit Trump for getting a major Republican policy victory. Instead, some substantial minority of Republicans clearly think that repealing abortion rights was bad and want to make it Biden’s fault.
This isn’t a surprise; numerous polls have shown that Dobbs is overwhelmingly unpopular. A Pew poll, for example, found that 41 percent of Republicans thought abortion should be legal in all/most cases. That’s a lot less than the 85 percent of Democrats who support abortion rights, but it shows there are a lot of Republicans who are torn by their party’s monomaniacal effort to strip women of bodily autonomy. Some of those Republicans are apparently trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance by blaming Biden for Dobbs.
There’s another question which is relevant to abortion. NYT/Siena asked voters in last month’s poll, “How much do you think Donald Trump respects women?” Among respondents, 55 percent said Trump respected women not much or not at all; only 41 percent said he respected women some or a lot.
Responses were heavily swayed by partisanship — 1 percent of Democrats said that Trump respected women “a lot” in comparison to 43 percent of Republicans. But again, the numbers indicate that the electorate does in fact broadly remember Trump’s history, from the Access Hollywood tape through the Supreme Court picks which led to the gutting of Roe.
The Biden campaign needs to remind voters about Trump
The fact that the worst moments of Trump’s presidency — the covid response and the January 6 coup attempt — aren’t top of mind for voters obviously isn’t great for Democrats. And that’s reflected in the new NYT poll, which shows Biden behind.
But when you drill down into the last two NYT’s polls and look at what they say about attitudes towards Trump, it’s clear that Americans do remember who he is — and remember that they don’t like him much. People remember he committed federal crimes; they remember that he threatened democracy; they remember that he has contempt for women; they remember that he gutted abortion rights.
That doesn’t ensure a Biden victory by any means. Partisanship ensures Trump a fair number of votes, and people still blame Biden in many respects for an ongoing sense of economic and cultural malaise. In part, that’s the result of the lingering, painful effects of the pandemic; in part it’s the result of the crisis of democracy which Republicans are currently perpetuating. And it’s probably in part because of the nightmarish Israeli assault on Gaza, which has killed some 35,000 people and which has badly split the Democratic coalition.
Still, Biden has a lot of money and resources with which to remind voters that the things they hate about Trump are in fact important and relevant. NYT/Siena gives us a picture of an electorate that isn’t really paying attention yet, and which is very present-minded. But voters do know who Trump is, and, for the most part, they don’t like him. That’s an opportunity for Biden, and not a great indicator for Trump heading into the heat of campaign season.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate this post, please support Public Notice by signing up. Paid subscribers make this work possible.
Thanks for reading.
I’ve said this before—the NYT polls skew the results, as you point out, by the way the questions are phrased. Thank you for shedding light on this. I don’t pay much attention to their polls or to Nate Silver.
Hard stop on all the polling BS. Especially from a paper who CEO “ don’t see my job as defending democracy”
Between the women’s health issues, better life, better finances for the majority who vote, And the slew of other information publicly available, journalists who support democracy need to stop repeating the tropes.
Yes, there’s a lot of work to do, yes we need to keep working to get out the vote and spell out the issues . What all journalists need to comprehend is how faulty every poll is, that is why they have all been wrong for years! One thing is a pungently clear, the old archaic methods of polling are not changing with the times. Why don’t you interview Christopher Bouzy-so far as I have been able to find he is the only one who is predicted accurately the outcomes within the last two years. Let’s find out what he does different. @cbouzy on twitter or Spoutible