Election Year Poll Pandemonium
To trust or not to trust election year polling trends?
“Biden’s poll numbers are awful,” lamented Nick Catoggio for USA TODAY on May 17, 2024, warning “Americans, brace for a Trump victory in November.”
“The hard reality is that the Southern and Western swing states won by the president in 2020 are drifting further into the former president’s column,” began Catoggio.
“Biden is probably going to lose this election,” he concluded, glumly. “Many of us realize that already, I suspect, but grief is a process. Anti-Trumpers who are momentarily stuck in denial still have more than five months to reach the acceptance stage, and naturally some are in no hurry to get there.”
Between persistent inflation, left-wing wedge issues like the war in Gaza and of course his very advanced age, Biden is less qualified now than he was four years ago to make the case that he’s the fitter of the two candidates,” Catoggio wrote. “Despite his best efforts to turn the race into another referendum on Trump, the data suggests that for most voters it’s more of a referendum on the incumbent, as reelection bids tend to be.”
As such, media outlets left and right are suddenly awash with explainers, do-it-yourself think pieces, and expert opinions.