The big moment
It’s getting closer to fish-or-cut-bait time for President Biden and the Democrats, and the events of the past two days have only compounded their dilemma. Call it “purgatory” or call it “limbo”; Democrats are in it.
On the one hand, a significant and still-growing number of Democrats (22) had called for Biden to drop out as of Friday afternoon, citing concerns about his ability to campaign and even do his job, and many others have rather suggestively questioned whether he can win.
On the other, Biden gave a mostly capable, hour-long news conference (some high-profile gaffes aside) Thursday night that could soothe some jittery Democrats. The lack of the predicted cascade of defections on Capitol Hill nearly 24 hours after the news conference is interesting, though much of that drama is playing out behind closed doors.
And now, new polling, including a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos survey suggests both that the race might have shifted less than we previously thought and that it remains a competitive one, especially nationally. Biden’s head-to-head performance compared to Donald Trump even ticked up slightly in Friday’s NPR/PBS/Marist College poll, which he led by a statistically insignificant two points.
Given all of this, I think it’s good time to take a look at The Post’s great new polling average tool (bookmark it, share it, debate it) and what the fuller data really say about where we stand.
The topline finding is that, across 10 quality surveys conducted both before and after the debate two weeks ago, Biden’s deficit has grown by an average of 1.9 points. He was trailing by less than a point before; he now trails by 2.6 points in those surveys.
All of these shifts are within the margin of error, but the large number of polls we have make it pretty evident that Biden lost at least some ground since his debate performance two weeks ago shook the political world.
In addition, the president lost ground in 8 of the 10 polls. The Marist poll is the only one he’s gained in. A CNN poll showed an unchanged race, but that’s after it already had him trailing by six points, a pretty large margin at the time. (That might suggest CNN’s pre-debate poll was a bit of an outlier.)
But Biden is doing slightly better in The Post’s overall polling average — which pulls in all qualifying polls, not just the ones conducted before and after the debate. He trails there by one point.
The polls also show that, even if the margin hasn’t shifted much, reservations about Biden have. For instance, The Post/ABC/Ipsos poll is a relatively good one for Biden, showing a tie. But it also showed more than 8 in 10 voters saying he’s too old — higher than most previous polls — and 56 percent of Democrats said he should step aside. The percentage of voters who said Biden was mentally sharper than Donald Trump dropped significantly, to just 14 percent. Half of independents said the debate made them view Biden less favorably; very few became more favorable towards him.
And of course, even if the race is that close nationally, it’s a bit of a mirage. That’s because Democrats likely need to win the popular vote by a few points to win the presidency.
Remember that Democrats won the popular vote by two points in 2016, but still lost the electoral college. And back in 2020 Biden won nationally by 4.5 points, but he won the three decisive states — Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — by 0.6 points or less. Shift the entire electorate just a point to the right in 2020, and Trump wins reelection.
(Indeed, the actual closeness of that race has passed many people by. My favorite stat: If you shift just 43,000 votes in those three states, Trump wins. If you shift just 90,000 votes overall, Republicans win not only the presidency, but also both the House and the Senate.)
Those two results suggest Democrats probably need to lead by around three or four points nationally to actually be “winning,” practically speaking. Regrettably, we have very little high-quality, post-debate data in the swing states, most of which Biden has trailed in.
And that’s why even a slight-but-real shift against Biden is so troublesome for Democrats. He was already behind, after all, and now he appears to be behind more. The polls suggest the margin has shifted against Biden by more than five points from a pretty tightly decided 2020 election.
Which brings us to the big caveats.
Maybe the polls are generally off by a few points — as they have been before — and Biden’s actually doing better. It’s harder and harder to poll these days. (Of course, Biden could also be doing worse; Trump over-performed the polls in both 2016 and 2020.)
And maybe the fact that Biden’s two best recent high-quality polls — the Post/ABC/Ipsos and Marist polls — are the leading edge of the race reverting to the mean. These are the two most recent polls, so maybe the debate temporarily chilled Biden’s support, but it’s now thawing a bit and the race is getting back to “normal.”
Whatever the case, the right call for Biden and Democrats is hardly as clear as it might have seemed even just a few days ago. And Biden has some things he can credibly point to to at least buy some time. The ideal outcomes for twitchy Democrats would have been either no impact (in which case Biden stays) or a big shift (in which case it’s clear he goes). They’re basically smack-dab in the middle of those two outcomes.
(In the meantime, keep a close eye on our polling averages, which will be updated with all the important data.)
A momentous quote
“Like most people I represent in Southwest Washington, I doubt the president’s judgment about his health, his fitness to do the job, and whether he is the one making important decisions about our country, rather than unelected advisers. … The crisis of confidence in the president’s leadership needs to come to an end. The president should do what he knows is right for the country and put the national interest first.”
-Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) in a statement Thursday — before Biden’s news conference — suggesting not just that Biden should drop out, but should resign. It’s one of the strongest statements from a Democrat to date.
