One more time with feeling . . . Ignore the polls!

November 6, 2023

          We are one year out from the 2024 general election, and media outlets are busy predicting a future they cannot know. I routinely advise readers to “ignore the polls,” so whenever I write about the polls, readers tell me I should follow my own advice. Fair point. But the poll by the New York Times released over the weekend prompted dozens of readers to send panicked emails asking me to “Talk them off the ledge.” The NYTimes poll will get more coverage in the Monday news cycle, so in anticipation of hundreds of additional panicked reactions, I will once again address the issue of polling. It is a scourge that we will live with for the next year, so occasional reminders that the only poll that matters will occur on November 5, 2024, is in order.

          In short, the NYTimes poll found that Biden is trailing Trump in five of six swing states and that Democrats are losing ground among young, Hispanic, and Black voters. Many voters believe that Trump is better able to manage the economy, that Biden is “too old,” and cannot identify anything that Biden did to improve their lives. Go figure!

          Nothing I write below should be interpreted as saying that polls do not contain valuable information. They can (depending on their quality). Polls include information that helps campaign managers and candidates focus and refine their message. They are NOT predictions. Remember Nate Silver’s article in FiveThirtyEight in 2011, “Is Obama toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election.” If polls taken one year before elections were meaningfully predictive, then each of the following candidates should have quit their first campaigns: Carter, Clinton, Obama, Biden—and Trump.  

          So, why should we not panic over the polls? Indeed, is there a silver lining? (Spoiler alert: Yes.)

          Let’s start with a lesson that we must not forget: The old paradigm of “horse-race” polls no longer applies. Why? Because such polls assume that two legitimate candidates are competing for votes within the system. We have never had a candidate who seeks to overthrow the system. Or who attempted a coup. Or who plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on the first day of his next term. Or who called for the execution of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Or who will use the DOJ to persecute his perceived enemies. Or who was found liable for sexual assault. Or who will support a nationwide ban on reproductive liberty. Or who views Putin as a friend and NATO allies as adversaries and leeches.

          I have not studied the NYTimes methodology, but I am confident it simply asks some variant of, “Which candidate do you support in 2024?” Faced with that limited construct, it is easy to be seduced into making a forced choice without regard to the fact that Trump is an anti-candidate. That error is compounded because the poll does not highlight Trump’s fundamental desire to destroy the system but instead asks about Biden’s age.

          As I have written before, believing that most voters will walk into the polling booth in 2024 and vote only for “Biden vs Trump” is simplistic—and beneath the NYTimes and its expert pollsters. When WaPo/ABC published a poll that was subjected to nearly universal derision for its flaws, I wrote the following:

          The 2024 presidential election features two candidates who are surrogates for different visions of America: Democracy versus autocracy; liberty versus tyranny; dignity versus bigotry; science versus disinformation; personal autonomy versus subservience to Christian nationalism; sustainability versus ecological disaster; safety versus gun violence; global stability versus confrontational isolationism. All of that—and much more—is on the ballot in 2024. The WaPo/ABC “horse-race” poll captures none of that.

          Three more points and then I will stop paying attention to the polls (as I recommend).

          First, Dan Pfeiffer’s article in The Message Box on Substack explains why the NYTimes poll shows the path forward. See Dan Pfeiffer, How to Respond to the Very Bad NYT Poll. If you are worried about the poll and want more details, I highly recommend Dan’s article. Pertinent passages include the following about “double haters” who dislike both Biden and Trump:

Perhaps the simplest explanation of Biden’s political challenges is that he has done a lot of good, popular things, and almost no one knows about them. Navigator tested a series of messages about Biden’s various accomplishments, including allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug costs, the bipartisan law to rebuild roads and bridges, and efforts to create more manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

Guess what? All of this stuff is super popular. Medicare negotiating drug prices is supported by 77% of Americans, including 64% of Republicans. The bipartisan infrastructure law has the support of 73% of Americans and a majority of Republicans. Every accomplishment tested in this poll had majority support. It’s hard to overstate how impressive that is in a deeply divided, highly polarized country at a time when the President’s approval ratings are in the low 40s.

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news: according to the poll, a majority of Americans heard little or nothing about the accomplishments tested. There is a yawning knowledge gap.

Now for more good news (think of this as a positive sandwich); the poll shows that when people are told about what Biden has done, his approval rating goes up. The voters most likely to move are the “Double Haters.”

          My penultimate point: The 2024 presidential election matters a lot. But so do congressional elections, gubernatorial elections, state legislative elections, municipal elections, and more. If—heaven forbid—Trump wins in 2024, a second Trump term with a Democratically controlled Congress is radically different than if Republicans control Congress. And states can be bulwarks of individual liberties if Republicans are able to pass national legislation. So, let’s not put every hope and aspiration into the presidential election. We should do everything we can to win up and down the ballot.

          My final point is this: We have been here before. Prior to the 2020 election, there were widespread predictions of a Trump victory, resulting in mass panic among Democrats. There was talk of the “end of democracy” if Trump won in 2020. David Frum wrote an article in The Atlantic in anticipation of a second Trump term. Here is what I wrote before the 2020 election in response to Frum’s article:

The latest egregious example is David Frum’s essay in The Atlantic, “America survived one Trump term. It wouldn’t survive a second.”

          David Frum may be planning to curl into a fetal position if Trump wins reelection, but I am not. In Frum’s view, all it takes to end 230 years of Democracy is a malignant narcissist and a skulk of cowards in the Senate. I beg to differ. To put it bluntly, there are more of us than there are of them, and we will protect and reclaim democracy even if it takes four more years (or longer).

          Frum believes that if we haven’t succeeded in defeating Trump after four years of resistance, Americans will say, “Darn! That didn’t work. Let’s call it quits on democracy.”  It is irresponsible to proclaim the end of democracy even if the purpose of doing so is to rally voters. In a metaphorical sense, the sky is always falling—if we let it. 

The future belongs to the brave. The fact that David Frum is apparently not among our ranks is not fatal to our cause; indeed, at this point, people like Frum are deadweight, wannabe Cassandras who foretell disaster but who fail to urge us to “rage against the dying of the light” of American democracy.

          I find no redemption in Frum’s conclusion that it is “up to voters” in 2020 to determine if American democracy survives. It is always true that each generation must reclaim democracy for itself. That our generation is being called upon to do so is no different than the challenges faced by generations before us. Ours will not be the generation to falter, no matter how many media handwringers tell us how bad things are or are going to get.

          Don’t get me wrong. Our situation is bad, and it could get much worse if Trump wins reelection. But the end of American democracy? Give me a break! Apparently, David Frum has never met America. Perhaps he should take the time to do so before he dismisses the collective will of hundreds of millions of Americans who dearly love our country and the freedom it promises. 

Concluding Thoughts.

          Although I did not intend to devote the entire newsletter to the NYTimes poll, I will stop here. We will be dealing with bad polls, handwringing, and negative press for the next year, so it is worth drawing a line in the sand and saying, “Enough!” The election is not over until it is over—notwithstanding the media’s best efforts to declare defeat a year in advance. And while I am criticizing the media, shame on the media for normalizing Trump as a legitimate political candidate. He is not.

          We will prevail over the long run, no matter what happens in 2024. (To be clear, I believe Biden will win re-election.) But if we have confidence that we will ultimately prevail, we can set aside the apocalyptic fears that we wrongly ascribe to a single election in 2024. We don’t need to panic over every poll.

The NYTimes poll reminds us that we have plenty of work to do in spreading the good news of Biden’s accomplishments. So, rather than needlessly fretting a year in advance about 2024, let’s recognize that we have a year to achieve the outcome we want. That is a lot of time. Let’s not waste it with worry!

          Talk to you tomorrow!