It’s too early for polls to tell us much about ’24
Things looked pretty sunny for Walter Mondale in early 1983.
A Harris national poll taken that January showed the former vice president nine percentage points ahead of sitting Republican President Ronald Reagan in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up.
Twenty-two months later, Reagan and Mondale squared off in the 1984 general election. Reagan crushed Mondale in the popular vote by 18 percentage points and carried 49 out of 50 states.
If you’re looking for an illustration of why presidential polling this early in an election cycle is close to meaningless, Reagan vs. Mondale is about as good as it gets.
It’s something to keep in mind while we consider the findings of a Washington Post/ ABC poll released a week ago. That poll showed Republican former President Donald Trump three percentage points (48 percent - 45 percent) over Democratic incumbent Joe Biden in a prospective rematch of their 2020 battle.
The poll set off private alarm bells among some Democrats, who saw it as evidence that Trump’s much-anticipated, relentlessly predicted political demise has been nothing more than wishful thinking on their part.
It also played into Democratic fears that Biden, who will be nearly 82 years old on Election Day next year, is either too feeble or perceived as too feeble by voters to win another term in office.
Former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, who was one of Biden’s rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, responded to the new poll by expressing concern.
“It’s the general consensus that Dems are content with Biden in a Trump rematch,” Castro said in a Feb. 6 tweet. “But this poll undermines Biden’s central argument for renomination.
“Two years is forever and it’s just one poll, but if he’s faring this poorly after a string of (legislative) wins, that should be worrisome.”
Castro’s tweet drew some annoyed responses from Democratic loyalists who suggested that he was undermining his own party by amplifying the political vulnerabilities of its standard bearer.
Castro’s underlying point, however, was sound.
Whether or not you agree with Biden’s agenda, it’s undeniable that his first two years in office have delivered more major domestic legislation than any U.S. president since Lyndon Johnson. If that information hasn’t broken through to voters, it’s a problem for Biden.
Progressive political watchers were quick to question the validity of the Washington POST/ABC poll, noting that it showed Trump ahead of Biden by nine percentage points among voters in the 18-39 range, which is completely out of sync with what previous polls have told us about young voters.
Nonetheless, Biden’s Feb. 7 State of the Union address felt like an acknowledgment that he hasn’t done a good enough job of selling his own record.
The first half of the speech was loaded with references to bills he had signed into law: a bipartisan infrastructure package, a bill designed to spur microchip production and the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act.
Biden offered a message of economic populism. He talked about restoring a “hollowed out” middle class and the the need for people to buy American. He touted workers rebuilding bridges and said this country would never again be dependent on foreign countries when it came to the production of microchips.
In the second half of the speech, Biden took a more combative stance, goading Republicans into heckling his suggestion that some members of their caucus have wanted to sunset Social Security and Medicare.
It was the liveliest performance in recent memory from an often lethargic public speaker. At least for the moment, it eased some Democratic fears about 2024.
But the truth is that we don’t know much of anything about 2024 and polls don’t help much.
In early 1983, Reagan was battling a devastating recession. His poll numbers reflected that. By November 1984, the economy had turned around in emphatic fashion.
It’s true that the 1980s electorate was more mercurial — and voters more persuadable — than we see in these times of entrenched partisanship.
But unanticipated events can still create voter shifts. In February 2019, we didn’t anticipate the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2023, we don’t know what the economy will look like around election time, or what foreign-policy challenges might emerge.
In early 2011, a Rasmussen poll showed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee running dead-even in a hypothetical match with then-president Barack Obama. Obama and Huckabee never met in a general election, but hindsight tells us that Obama would have destroyed Huckabee in 2012.
The lesson is simple: Any poll taken this early, even a highly accurate one, tells us very little about what to expect in November 2024.