e; I wrote a better headline than the ABC editors decided to and excerpted a bit more
According to the poll, conducted using Ipsos' Knowledge Panel, 86% of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president. That figure includes 59% of Americans who think both he and former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, are too old and 27% who think only Biden is too old.
Sixty-two percent of Americans think Trump, who is 77, is too old to serve as president. There is a large difference in how partisans view their respective nominees -- 73% of Democrats think Biden is too old to serve but only 35% of Republicans think Trump is too old to serve. Ninety-one percent of independents think Biden is too old to serve, and 71% say the same about Trump.
Concerns about both candidates' ages have increased since September when an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 74% of Americans thought Biden -- the oldest commander in chief in U.S. history -- was too old to serve another term as president, and 49% said the same about Trump.
Part that drew my eye,
The poll also comes days after the Senate failed to advance a bipartisan foreign aid bill with major new border provisions.
Americans find there is blame to go around on Congress' failure to pass legislation intended to decrease the number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border -- with about the same number blaming the Republicans in Congress (53%), the Democrats (51%) and Biden (49%). Fewer, 39%, blame Trump.
More Americans trust that Trump would do a better job of handling immigration and the situation at the border than Biden -- 44%-26% -- according to the poll.
So that bipartisan border bill stunt was terrible policy, and it doesn't seem to have done anything for the Democratic party politically
Can we please stop trying to compromise with fascists now?
Any Democratic candidate with a pulse, and tbh we could probably get voters to moderate their expectations on both of those points if we had to
60% of the country has grown to hate and fear Trump just as much as 40% of it adores him
I meant my question literally. If Biden wins 2024, Kamala 2028 feels like a bad decision. If it goes the other way, there's a non-zero chance the Dems are running against trump3, or a trump-like that beats him in the gop primaries, or both.
Whoever the Dems field in 2028 has to start making a name for themselves sooner rather than later, and I'm mostly disappointed the Dems aren't using the primaries as a way to show off that candidate.
After Obama's upset rise it seems like the old guard are more dedicated to ensuring no such breakout could occur again. I can't even recall who did the keynote address in 2020. AOC had to be invited in by Bernie to get some stage time. The only progressives I can remember were the actual primary candidates.
AOC is a fantastic communicator and Ayanna Pressley is probably the best orator in the party, but they're just continually on guard from their left flank so instead of trying to build a youth operation that shares the same big tent but might be a little leftier than themselves they just shut them out of everything.
The 60/40 split is just untrue. And it's untrue in a meaningful way. The favorability/unfavorability split is closer to 52/43 leaving 5% in afuzzy place. Without attuning to the needs and concerns of this 5%, a false sense of certainty can emerge leading to being surprised when things don't go the obvious way.
Subsequently, people lean in to the only thing left to do, cantankerous online debate with people who just don't get it.
These favorability polls don't mean as much as giving the people who matter a story to pull that lever for your candidate. And the people that matter are the undecided in swing states. Without meeting and talking to these people, we don't know what's important for them.
That same metric for Biden is ~55/40, but he's polling just barely ahead or even with Trump when the question is "who would you vote for" in pretty much all of the recent polls I've seen. I don't think favorability is going to translate well into votes this election because there's a decent number of voters out there who disapprove of Biden but are going to vote for him anyway, while all of Trump's supporters are cult members who are going to give him 10/10 and everyone else 0s anytime they get the chance to.
If it was a different election and we had different candidates, sure, but polls have been remarkably consistent - voters do not like Joe Biden. The best argument to get them to vote for him anyway "the Republicans will destroy the country, look at their nominee," but it's a really strong argument. That's what won in 2020 and it's only going to become a stronger message every time Trump gets a headline for saying something dumb and hateful.
I worry that tactic will result in low voter turnout. And that's not good for Biden.
Polls consistently show that Biden does the best against trump compared to any other Democrat. Why so many people have deluded themselves into believing that Biden is the worst bet against trump will never cease to baffle me.
NYT poll from October showed "Generic Democratic candidate" doing 12 points better than Biden against Trump
I tried to see if that had changed since this one poll, but it seems like they haven't asked it since and I haven't been able to find something comparable in another poll
Cross tabs for that October poll - https://web.archive.org/web/20240214192807/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/07/us/elections/times-siena-battlegrounds-registered-voters.html
Same poll in December without the question - https://web.archive.org/web/20240214192741/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/19/us/elections/times-siena-poll-registered-voter-crosstabs.html
The issue is that "Generic Democratic candidate" doesn't exist. It doesn't have any of the baggage or weaknesses of any actual candidate, and can represent anything to anyone. It's kind of a pointless exercise. The funny thing is that Biden is kind of the generic democratic candidate.
Take a look here and search for any real democratic candidate (Newsom/Harris/Buttigieg/Whitmer/Etc) and you'll see that he consistently does better against Trump.
Literally the first non-Biden result on that page is Michelle Obama +3 while Biden is -2. The next non-Harris poll has Whitmer +4 vs. Biden -8.
Interesting. On the desktop version, it has a filter right at the top. I assume you are using mobile because I don't see it on my phone right now.
I just scrolled down reading results looking for not-Biden on the Democratic side.