Poll Realism, Part II

or Kamala, Joe, and the Politics of Delegitimization.

Jul 27, 2024

Sometimes, you have to insist that much of the dust be settled before you sweep the floors

(Copyright Charles M Schultz)

I had two grandmothers who probably would have disgreed with that bit of common sense, but neither was really a model of following well reasoned advice.

Before one can assess the bow out of President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris’ ascension as the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee, it is essential to take another look at Trump’s approval/disapproval metadata poll results while he was in office.

From May 2017 through November 2020, there was a continuous straight line of 42% approval and 52% disapproval. Prior to that, Donald Trump hovered near the 50% approval for the last 11 days of January 2017 without really reaching that mark. His disapproval marks grew steadily until May 2017 where it flattened out into an EKG line that kind of indicated Trump would lose in 2020 — even before COVID.

Since Donald Trump won just over 46% of the popular vote in 2016 and 2020, the question becomes:

Why would two-thirds of the Don’t Know or No Opinion respondents to theApproval/Disapproval polls for President Trump support him on Election Day in 2020.

It seems odd that after 42 months being ensconced in the No Opinion of Donald Trump to suddenly jump in and vote for him. It’s even odder once Joe Biden becomes the nominee for the Democrats in the Summer of 2020. At that point, there should have been a shift of that line towards Donald Trump. Didn’t happen.

Worse still is that line continues today.1

There are two schools of thought to explaining this disconnect.

One is that the polling is off — after all there is a margin of error built into polling. True, however, Joe Biden won over 51% in 2020, so saying the number might be wrong makes no sense if they are spot-on on one side but way off on the other.

The other is that a sizable portion of Trump’s support is soft. About 10% of GOP voters are not as pro-Trump as the rest. Whether they are old school conservative who oppose his economic populism, pro-choice moderates, Republicans who’d rather not engage in cultish fealty, or something else, 10% of the people who cannot decide if they approve or disapprove of Donald Trump will vote for him.

Maybe.

Lost in the swirl of Corporate Media’s obsession with Joe Biden’s age (a whole 3 1/2 years or so older that 78 year old Donald Trump) was the fact that the Lincoln Project2, which came into being in 2019, is hard at work getting Republicans to vote against Trump and MAGA Republican candidates, that a group called “Republican for Biden” existed, and that Nikki Haley’s SuperPAC is working assiduously to get Nikki Haley supporters to vote for Kamala Harris.3 That last group has the potential of being considerably more problematic than the first two insofar as Nikki Haley was getting 20% or more of the vote in the GOP presidential primaries after dropping out.

Throw in that with the fact a numerous big GOP names4 have publicly announced their intention to not vote for Donald Trump in 2024 and it’s question whether Trump’s poll numbers are actual that strong.

Hey, Kevin, what about Biden and Harris’ approval/disapproval polls?

Well, they suck.5

Biden’s approval/disapproval polls flipped in September 2021, when a COVID weary public and an economy still coming out of a recession imploded politically.

Follow that with inflation was spurred buy oil companies engaging in price gouging at the pumps for the first 4 months of 2022 and the results, politically speaking, explain Biden’s unpopularity. When the rest of Corporate America jumped in to gouge consumers while blaming the supply chain and energy costs, Biden’s ability to stand above the political fray collapsed.

That said, it’s important to understand what approval/disapproval numbers mean. Imbedded in the Trump and Biden approval/disapproval number is an acceptance of hardened partisan opposition.

Hillary Clinton got just over 48% of the vote in 2016 and Donald Trump got 46% of the vote in 2016 and 2020. Any disapproval above 48% for Trump is bad and any approval below 46% is problematic. The inverse would also true for a Democratic presidential candidate (i.e. less than 48% approval is bad and more than 46% disapproval is bad). 2016 is basically the baseline political measure in the age of Trumpism.

Trumps’s disapproval numbers (which are in the low 50s range) are a measure of unified opposition to him outside of the GOP. Notably both Trump and Biden had the same problem, less than 100% of the party faithful approved of them of a day-to-day basis.

Biden had been stymied by an underperforming approval and a misinterpreted but very worrisome disapproval polling. At about 38/55 going into the Summer of 2024, it was predictable that without a stellar debate performance on June 27th; Biden’s candidacy was at risk within Democratic Party ranks.

Biden has lost 14 percentage points on the approval side and saw his disapproval numbers grow by 9 points from his election percentages. (Biden won in 2020 by roughly 52% to 46%).

While the post-COVID economy and weariness from it after two plus years explains some of it; the Politics of Delegitimization6 explains it far more clearly.

Biden’s election victory in 2020 was never been accepted by the GOP rank or file. And it was more than merely January 6th, it’s all the preceding machinations of Donald Trump, his Administration lackeys, and political advisors before then. It has not improved much since Biden took office.

Let’s put a pin in that though for a moment.

One of the most buried story-lines of 2020 and afterwards until probably right now is that the United States had its first female Vice President, its first Vice President of Color, and its first First Generation American Vice President in nearly 200 years (John C. Calhoun was the last one).7

[BTW: If Kamala Harris is elected President, she will be the the second President to have both parents born outside of the United States.8 That is, in many respects, the American Dream.]

Kamala Harris should have been a “must have” interview for magazines, newspapers, radio, and TV. Unfortunately, it was mostly crickets on that news front.

Then on November 29, 2023 President Joe Biden turned 81, which apparently was some sort of weird journalistic cue to equate age with inability to do one’s job versus actual proof of failing to do one’s job.

The New York Times, which I am convinced is sitting on rolls and rolls of newsprint that they expect to use covering the next Trump Administration, began in 2023 a concerted effort to cast Joe Biden in a poor light and take less than a critical line on Donald Trump. Here, the study backing this up is right here.9

The Delegitimization of Joe Biden went from mere partisan election denial to a media frenzy of news stories telling the American public that Biden was really old. Neither Biden’s political team inside the White House nor his campaign nor the Democrats generally stated the realist response to this ridiculous trope.

Exactly what official act (to quote the Supreme Court’s odious immunity decision), core constitutional duty, or presidential duty did Biden fail to do? There is not one.

To make matters worse, idealists began freaking out over losing a ideological battle to Trump’s fairly neo-fascist GOP and pragmatists began what I like to call “fantasy sports” politics, in which various alternative candidacies are proffered and polled versus one’s opponents to see if you can do better.

For those inclined to take a look at Kamala Harris’ approval/disapproval numbers prior to her essentially sewing up the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. Forget it. It’s meaningless, the only important numbers for Kamala Harris and her campaign are the current numbers.

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