The Daily - The Unhappy Voters Who Could Swing the Election

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Millions of voters in states across the country cast their ballots in the presidential primary on Super Tuesday, leaving little doubt that the November election will be a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.But in a race that is increasingly inevitable, a New York Times/Siena College poll found a critical group of voters who are making the outcome of that race anything but certain.Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, explains who these voters are and why they present a particular threat to Mr. Biden.Guest: Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times.Background reading: The big change between the 2020 and 2024 races: Biden is unpopular.The latest NYT/Siena College poll includes those who started the survey but didn’t finish it. Here’s why.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. Millions of voters in states across the country cast their ballots in the presidential primary on Super Tuesday, leaving little doubt that the November election will be a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But in a race that's increasingly inevitable, a New York Times-Siena College poll shows there's a critical group of voters that are making the outcome of that race anything but. Today, my colleague Nate Cohn on who those voters are and why they represent a particular threat to Joe Biden. It's Wednesday, March 6th. Nate! Hello, hello.

How are you? Hello, hello. How's it going? It's going well. How are you? Good. It's a little rainy. My feet are sopping wet.

Oh, I did the subway. So did I. I'm going to shut the door here. So, Nate, Super Tuesday has just happened, which means, of course, more than a dozen states have voted in their primaries, and President Biden and former President Trump continue to sail to their respective nominations. I mean, you know, at this point, there is really no suspense at all, barring something extremely unexpected, whether they will be the nominees in the general election. That's right. Nearly half of all the delegates at stake have been awarded,

and Biden and Trump have won nearly all of them. So they are right now just on the cusp of winning a majority of the delegates and securing the nomination, and they'll do that over the next week or two. Okay, so to that point, the New York Times just released a poll about how people are feeling about that inevitable matchup. And that's what we want to talk with you about today, Nate. Not the results, because frankly, they're not all that surprising. But instead, this poll that gets at how voters are actually thinking about their choices in this election. So tell me about this poll. The top line result is that voters are not happy about this upcoming election. So tell me about this poll. The top line result is that voters are not happy

about this upcoming election. When we ask them an open-ended question, they say that they're frustrated, they're disappointed, that they're anxious, they're scared, they offer negative or at least uncertain feelings about the election. That's in no small part because they don't like either of the candidates. They don't have a favorable view of either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. But when we ask them to choose how they would vote if the election were held today, Trump is firmly in the lead. He's up by five points among registered voters and four points among those who we think are likeliest to vote. And that's the largest lead, by the way, that Trump has ever had in a Times-Siena or Times-CBS poll. And it's really one of the largest leads that a Republican presidential

candidate has had, period, over the last 20 years since George W. Bush led John Kerry. So this is pretty remarkable. I mean, a peak for his entire career in politics, really one of the highest ever leads. I mean, this is probably in Biden camp raising some real alarms. You would think.

And it's worth noting, it is not just our poll here. All of the polls show Donald Trump leading in the critical battleground states worth more than the 270 electoral votes he needs to win. There were other polls this weekend that showed Trump in the lead, CBS, Fox News. So there's a consensus at this point that Donald Trump has a lead and he's had it now for four months. This is a sustained and clear advantage. Okay, so voters aren't feeling too great about their options, but with the options that they do have, they're leaning towards Trump in this moment by a pretty meaningful margin.

That's right. And it's worth dwelling on why Trump has the lead and why that's related to this dissatisfaction. When we polled voters four years ago, a majority of voters said they had a favorable view of Joe Biden. And a majority of voters said they had an unf view of Joe Biden. And a majority of voters said they had an unfavorable view of Donald Trump. Four years later, Donald Trump's numbers are almost exactly the same. In our final poll in 2020, 54% said they had an unfavorable view of Donald Trump. Today,

54% say they have an unfavorable view of Donald Trump. So not much difference there. But the top line result is completely different. And that's because Joe Biden has gone from being a broadly acceptable, relatively well-liked figure, who four years ago, 52% of voters said they had a favorable view of, to a pretty unpopular candidate who voters are very skeptical of. Now, 38% of voters have a favorable view of him. His job approval rating is even less than that. So big change in the Biden category. Huge change. It completely flips around the fundamental premise of the Biden campaign from 2020. Last time, Joe Biden was the guy who was acceptable to enough people who disliked Donald Trump that he could win. That's why Democrats chose him over someone

more controversial like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. It's not true anymore. Okay, so tell us about the voters who are driving this change, this dissatisfaction with Biden. The easiest way to think about it is that there's this group of voters who dislike both candidates. And this is a really important group that pollsters like to call the double haters. Double haters. Double haters. They don't like either of them. Twice the hate. And they really have the potential to decide this election. So give me a sense of who these voters are.

Well, the double haters are about 19% of the electorate in our poll, and that's up from 5% in 2020. So it's a big increase. Big increase. And last time they voted for Biden by a three to one margin. And, you know, they're a mixed bag. When you call them up. Hello. Hello. Hello. Well, I really never they're a mixed bag. When you call them up. Hello.

Hello. Hello. Whoa, I really never expected a reporter to call. They tell you all kinds of different things. It's really the age. One of the main things is just his age. He's past his prime. He doesn't really know what's going on.

Many of them think Joe Biden is just too old to be an effective president. I think Joe Biden is a lovely older gentleman that should resign at some point. But other than that, economically, we've been in the dump. Some of them say that they are deeply dissatisfied about the cost of living being 20 percent higher than it was four years ago. Don't make food more expensive. We all buy it. It's very obvious. And for people who have low rates. On a grade level, I would probably give him a D minus. And you can imagine different people, different archetypes of people who would have liked Biden last time, but have soured on him now. I mean, I'm horrified to think in this country, this is the best we can come up with for the next four years to be a president. You have a moderate voter who maybe reluctantly voted for Joe Biden in 2020 because they didn't

like Donald Trump. Joe Biden has kind of like walked in and just has let this country get overrun with all kinds of just stuff happening. Now just thinks that the administration has done a poor job at the border or on foreign policy or spent too much money and hasn't reined in the national debt. I would probably consider myself a leftist. Leaning more towards the left. Pretty progressive. You can imagine a voter on the left.

Continuing to back Israel in Gaza has been particularly disappointing. You can imagine a voter on the left. Who is frustrated by Biden's handling of Gaza. Or thinks that the administration has failed to be sufficiently progressive in its domestic agenda. You know, I'm not very excited right now. Progressive in its domestic agenda. You know, I'm not very excited right now. And what's particularly notable is that this group of double haters includes young voters, black voters and Latino voters. The kinds of voters that Democrats usually count on to win elections. And in the end, this very diverse group of voters is pretty split on how they'll vote in the next election.

Split how exactly? Like, how are these voters thinking about their vote in this moment? I mean, they're double haters, as you say, so they don't love either candidate. But do we have a sense of which way they're leaning right now? You know, when I said split, I meant that they are deeply unhappy with their choice. And as a consequence, they are splitting in all kinds of ways. I do plan on voting for Joe Biden unless somebody else magically comes to the forefront before then. Some of them say that they'll vote for Biden. I have no other choice but to stick with them. We're just being forced to pick essentially the lesser of two evils. And some of them. I honestly don't think I'm going to vote. Say they're just being forced to pick essentially the lesser of two evils. And some of them...

I honestly don't think I'm going to vote. ...say they're simply not going to vote. There's no good outcome or rather simply win, so it doesn't matter. In the general for the presidency, I will be voting for a third party this year. Others say they'll vote for a minor party candidate. My first time since I think the fourth grade when we got to do a mock ballot and I voted for Nader. I think it was the fourth grade. I don't really, I guess I'd have to really do some soul searching and try and figure out who's going to do the least amount of damage.

Still others, they just throw up their hands and say that they're undecided. I could say it would probably take a lot of whining for me to figure out what I'm going to do. I'm definitely leaning more towards Donald Trump. And some of them will vote for Trump. I'm just picking the least horrible alternative. And I think that's Donald Trump this time around. If you had told yourself back in 2020 that you'd vote for Trump in 2024, what do you think your reaction would have been?

I, it would have been like a slap in the face. Probably. Wow, okay, so Biden might actually be driving these voters, voters who actually voted for him in 2020, into the arms of Trump. And even if some of these voters don't actually switch sides, they might just stay home, as you say, or vote third party, which would also be pretty damaging for Biden. That's right. And it's worth remembering that the last election was pretty close. Joe Biden only won the critical battleground

states by less than a percentage point in most cases. So he does not have room to bleed a huge chunk of his support among young black and Latino voters. And the critical question for this election is whether these voters remain this dissatisfied with Joe Biden eight months from now. Biden eight months from now. We'll be right back. So, Nate, from everything you've said, this election could really come down to these voters who are legitimately torn over what to do. I know it's early. We're eight months out. And we know how these voters are leaning. But do we have a sense of where they'll land come Election Day? The short answer is no. I mean, there's a long way until the election. But to try and at least get a sense of where this could head and to see the lay of the land, you know, I like to look back at historical examples that feel somewhat like this moment. And oddly enough, I think the example that comes to my mind isn't 2020, even though this is a rematch, but 2016, the election between Trump and Clinton. Okay, so tell me about 2016. What is it about that election that feels analogous to you?

The thing that is most analogous is that 2016 also featured a large number of these double haters, voters who didn't like either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. In fact, there were more double haters in that election than in this one. And there's a lot about the way that race played out that already feels reminiscent of the polling today. One obvious example is the large number of people who are flirting with third party candidates. Back in 2016, Gary Johnson actually peaked around 10% of the vote. It's a little bit like how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is routinely polling around 10% of the vote in the polls that are asking about him at this point. And there were

also in that election a large number of traditionally Democratic and Republican voters who were not behaving like traditionally Democratic and Republican voters in the polls when they were being given this choice they didn't want to make. How do you mean? There were a lot of blue-collar Democrats, for instance, who were deeply frustrated with Hillary Clinton's position on free trade or on immigration and who were actually a little bit tempted by some of what Donald Trump had to offer on those issues. Right, we remember them well, working-class whites.

And on the other hand, there were also a lot of highly educated Republicans who didn't like Donald Trump. That was partly on the issues, right, because of his stances on immigration or opposition to entitlement cuts. It was also, though, because of his conduct. He routinely said things that were considered inappropriate or even offensive. And that repelled a lot of traditionally Republican voters as well. And so the polls showed a large number of voters who were traditionally Republican or traditionally Democrat who were frustrated by both candidates and were either undecided, considering doing something shocking like voting for the other party, or supporting a minor party candidate in that election, Gary Johnson. Interesting. So in the way that Biden is struggling with his traditional coalition in 2024, we saw both Clinton and Trump having that same struggle in 2016. Clinton, of course, with blue collar Democrats, Trump with some subset of traditional Republicans, college grads, people like that. Exactly. And it created a very volatile campaign.

And depending on what the news was at any given point, these undecided voters who were conflicted between the two candidates could swing between the two sides very abruptly, because just depending on whether on any given day you were thinking about the thing that upset you most about Hillary or Donald Trump, you could give a pollster a completely different answer. And Nate, what were some examples of those swings? Well, you may remember that in the summer of 2016, that Jim Comey at once exonerated Hillary Clinton on the email server front, but then in the same press conference scolded her conduct as, you know, inappropriate and negligent. And there was actually a moment

after that where Donald Trump surged into a very brief lead around the Republican convention. And then, you know, just a few weeks later, Donald Trump would do something offensive that would blow it all up. I remember, for instance, that at the Democratic Convention, there was a gold star parent who spoke on behalf of Hillary Clinton. And Donald Trump spent a week going after the parent of a soldier who had died in Afghanistan. Right. It just seemed so shocking. Exactly. Then Hillary Clinton would surge back into the lead. And as a result of this, you know, sort of back and forth between good news and bad news for these two deeply disliked candidates, the polls would swing as well. And a wide range of possibilities became pretty evident. And there was no way to know until the election which of those possibilities

was where the voters would land in the end. So how might we see that kind of volatility play out this time around? This time, most of the volatility is on the Biden side. As we mentioned, Donald Trump's favorability ratings are pretty solid at this point. Unlike in 2016, Republicans have mostly unified around him. I'll point out, by the way, that the Haley vote is mostly voters who voted for Biden in 2020. Interesting. So almost all of this swing can happen on the Democratic side. And here again, we have this wide range of possibilities, right? If it's really true that young, black, Latino, also relatively moderate Haley voters and so on, that this group of double haters is so negative on Joe Biden that they'll vote for Donald Trump, Trump could win a decisive victory. But on the other hand, if these voters are reminded of why they voted for Joe Biden four years ago, reminded of the reasons they don't like Donald Trump, then you could get a very different outcome.

You know, there's been a phenomenon that people have talked about called Trump amnesia, where many voters have sort of forgotten about many of the things that led them to dislike Donald Trump so much in the first place. And it's worth remembering what 2016 or 2020 was like, right? I mean, every week, Donald Trump did something that offended a new group of voters, whether it was women or Latino voters or his handling of the Black Lives Matter movement. We haven't had anything like that this cycle. Now, maybe that means that Donald Trump has become a more effective politician. Maybe that's what we'll learn. Or maybe it's just a matter of time that once the campaign gets underway, once the general election begins, that Donald Trump is going to be in the news more. He's going to defend voters yet again. And even if he doesn't, the Joe Biden campaign can hope to remind voters of the reasons why they didn't like Donald Trump in the first place. And it's entirely possible that if that plays out, that if voters are reminded of the reasons they dislike Donald Trump as the election

nears, that this large group of voters that voted for Joe Biden last time that dislikes him today will ultimately return to his side because they dislike Donald Trump even more. And presumably all of this could really lead to a lot of swinging back and forth in the polls this time around, right? It could. I mean, it depends on how the news plays out, right? I mean, to the 2016 example, that volatility required a very volatile news cycle that led voters to swing back and forth. If Donald Trump comes into the news one week and says the most offensive thing imaginable about Palestinians and black and Latino voters, maybe Joe Biden can surge and quickly re-consolidate these voters. And then if the very next week Joe Biden has, you know, a moment where he doesn't look up to the job, then maybe those voters swing back, right? That's the sort of case where you could see that volatility. But even if you don't see

that volatility in the polls, the underlying, like, instability of the preference of voters is still there. These are, regardless of whether the polls swing, these are still voters agonizing over a choice they don't want to make. And that still creates the basis for the polls to swing, regardless of whether they actually do. Yeah. So, Nate, what about the ultimate outcome? I mean, what lessons can we take from 2016 that might show us what this could look like in the final vote tally in November? Well, I don't want 2016 to, you know, seem like it's going to predict the outcome. But, you know, in the end, in 2016, many of the traditionally Republican voters who disliked

Donald Trump did return to his side. They didn't want to vote for him. They really didn't. Yeah. But in the end, when they got into the ballot box, they voted for him. And they did so because they were Republican voters and they couldn't, in the end, get around to voting for a Democrat they disliked like Hillary Clinton. Yeah. And I think that for Joe Biden, that's a pretty favorable precedent.

Clinton. Yeah. And I think that for Joe Biden, that's a pretty favorable precedent. You know, just to take one example from this poll, more than 10 percent of black Democrats who voted for Joe Biden say they're going to vote for Donald Trump. Wow. Now, maybe they'll do that in the end. Yeah. But when they get into the ballot box, are voters like that really going to vote for Donald Trump as opposed to just saying it to a pollster with eight months ago? I don't know. But I know that in 2016 that that's exactly the kind of dynamic that didn't hold on Election Day and those voters came back to Donald Trump. At the end, they came back to their tribe, right? They did. It took all the way to the end, but they did it. So to the extent that the polls today would lead someone to believe that Joe Biden can't win, you know, I think that would be a mistake given the characteristics of the voters

who are currently giving Donald Trump the lead. Got it. So the potential bright spot here for Biden is that history tells us that these voters do tend to come back to their party, but that it's not guaranteed, right? It's a big if. That's right. And it's especially true when sort of the underlying political conditions ought to be favorable to the candidate hoping to coalesce their own party support. I mean, this is an election Joe Biden should win. He's an incumbent president running for reelection and the economy is healthy enough. Usually you win under those conditions. And that's before considering that

your opponent is accused of multiple federal crimes. So the political science seminar would tell us this is a win for Biden. Yeah. If this was a test in some political science seminar class, you were given the conditions we've got today and the nature of Joe Biden's opponent, you would say Joe Biden should win this election. And so you're hoping, if you're the Biden campaign, that those underlying political conditions mean that these voters are probably likelier than not to come back to your side. On the other hand, Biden's unusually weak. He has the lowest approval ratings of any president seeking reelection at this point in his term. His age is an extremely unusual factor that might prove to just be disqualifying for a certain share of voters. Not exactly something he can do anything

about. Yeah. So you have a president who has some of the lowest ratings on record, who faces a problem that would be very difficult for him to address. And we just don't know whether that is something that will prevent him from capitalizing on what should be a favorable opportunity here. We've never seen anything like this before. So if I've learned nothing else from this conversation, Nate, it is that we are in for a very volatile, very unpredictable election. It could be very volatile, and it's definitely difficult to predict. Nate, thank you. Sabrina, thanks for having me.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Tuesday, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said that she would not seek re-election, ending more than a year of speculation about her political future. Sinema has had a dramatic tenure in Washington, winning her seat as a Democrat, but then switching her party affiliation to independent in 2022. She supported some parts of President Biden's agenda, but Democratic activists had criticized what they said

was her eagerness to side with business interests above progressive causes. Her decision to bow out of the race now sets up a more traditional matchup between the eventual Republican and Democratic nominees in a critical state that could determine which party wins control of the Senate in November. control of the Senate in November. And President Biden said that talks on a possible six-week ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas were, quote, in the hands of Hamas right now. He said negotiators were racing to reach a deal before the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins this weekend, as a continued Israeli onslaught during the holiday could further inflame Arab-Israeli tensions. But later on Tuesday, a senior Hamas leader, speaking in Lebanon, appeared to reject the deal, insisting that Israeli hostages would be released

only after a more permanent ceasefire was in place, and Israeli forces had withdrawn from Gaza. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Muj Zaydi, and Diana Nguyen, with help from Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Rachel Quester, contains original music by Diane Wong, Marian Lozano, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi.

See you tomorrow.