The Wall St. Journal reports “The latest Zogby Interactive poll, taken during the Democratic convention, shows John Kerry ahead in 13 of the 16 battleground states we track. That is his biggest lead — in terms of the number of states — since Zogby began conducting twice-a-month online polls for WSJ.com in late May. Moreover, his lead is greater than the margin of error in five of the states (including Pennsylvania), up from four states just before the convention. And Mr. Kerry took back narrow leads in Florida and West Virginia.”
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 26: Kennedy Now Taking As Many Votes From Trump As From Biden
Polls are showing a subtle but potentially important shift that I discussed at New York:
For a while there, the independent ticket of ex-Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan seemed to be taking crucial votes away from Democrat Joe Biden, at least as indicated by comparing three-way and five-way (with Cornel West and Jill Stein) polls to head-to-head matchups of the incumbent and Donald Trump. Now, even as Biden has all but erased his polling deficit against Trump, heâs getting some more good news in surveys that include other candidates.
Two recent major national polls show Biden running better in a five-way than a two-way race. According to NBC News, Biden moves from two points down to two points up when the non-major-party candidates are included. In the latest Marist poll, Biden leads Trump by three points head-to-head and by five points in a five-way race. Since left-bent candidates West and Stein are pulling 5 percent in the former poll and 4 percent in the latter (presumably taking very few votes from Trump), you have to figure Kennedy is beginning to cut into the MAGA vote to an extent that should get Team Trumpâs attention. And it has, NBC News reports:
“Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly said heâs confident that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will pull more votes away from President Joe Biden than from him â a net win for the Republicanâs candidacy.
â’He is Crooked Joe Bidenâs Political Opponent, not mine,’Trump wrote on Truth Social late last month. ‘I love that he is running!’
“Behind closed doors, however, Trump is less sure. A Republican who was in the room with Trump this year as he reviewed polling said Trump was unsure how Kennedy would affect the race, asking the other people on hand whether or not Kennedy was actually good for his candidacy.”
Politico notes that Kennedy is drawing higher favorability numbers from Republican voters than from Democratic ones, which could indicate a higher ceiling for RFJ Jr. among Trump defectors. And itâs generally assumed from his past performances that there is a lower ceiling on Trumpâs support than on Bidenâs; he needs to be able to win with significantly less than a majority of the popular vote, as one Republican told Politico:
â’If the Trump campaign doesnât see this as a concern, then theyâre delusional,’ Republican consultant Alice Stewart said. ‘They should be looking at this from the standpoint that they canât afford to lose any voters â and certainly not to a third-party candidate that shares some of [Trumpâs] policy ideas.’â
One likely reason that Kennedy could be appealing to Republicans is the residual effect from the positive attention he received from conservative media when he was running against Biden in the Democratic primaries; his identification with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories also resonates more positively on the right side of the political spectrum than the left. So itâs in the interest of Team Trump to begin telling the former presidentâs sympathizers that RFK Jr. is actually a lefty, and that started happening recently, as the New York Times reported: âMr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, pointed in particular to Mr. Kennedyâs views on climate change and the environment, writing on his social media site that Mr. Kennedy was more âradical Leftâ than Mr. Biden.â
The idea, of course, is not only to discourage potential Trump voters from drifting toward the independent candidate, but to encourage potential Biden voters to consider a Kennedy vote.
If Kennedy continues to draw votes from both Biden and Trump, each of their campaigns will need to make a strategic decision about how to deal with him: Do you ignore him and count on the usual fade in support afflicting non-major-party presidential candidates as Election Day nears, or do you attack him as too far left (if youâre Trump) or too far right (if youâre Biden) and try to make him a handicap to your major-party opponent? The more aggressive approach has become common among Democrats seeking to intervene in Republican primaries (or in the recent case of the California Senate race, a nonpartisan top-two primary) by loudly attacking candidates theyâd prefer to face in the general election, encouraging Republicans to flock to the supposed menace to progressivism. This kind of tactic â if deployed with some serious dollars â could have an effect on Kennedyâs base of support.
Certainly Trump seems to be considering it. With his usual practice of saying the quiet part out loud, Trump opined: âIf I were a Democrat, Iâd vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden, because heâs frankly more in line with Democrats.â
Trying to minimize losses to Kennedy and maximize opposite-party votes for Kennedy could become a routine practice down the stretch. Where and by whom this strategy is pursued will depend in part on where RFK Jr. is ultimately on the ballot. Right now he has nailed down ballot access in just two states, Utah and Michigan. CBS News reports the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket is close to securing a spot on the November ballot in a number of other states:
“Kennedyâs campaign says it has completed signature gathering in seven other states in addition to Utah and Michigan â Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nebraska and Iowa.
“The super PAC supporting Kennedy, American Values 2024, says it has collected enough signatures in Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina.”
Coping with Kennedy could become a game of three-dimensional chess between the Biden and Trump campaigns. But if it begins to look like RFK Jr. has become an existential threat to Democrats or to Republicans, you can bet theyâll go medieval on him without even a momentâs hesitation.
Note that Zogby has just classified AZ, CO, VA, and NC as “battleground states”. I thought these states were supposed to be RED. đ
PS: VA hasn’t gone Democratic in a Presidential election since 1964.
Very interesting if you look at this poll state by state.
Using WSJ definitions and expanding it, if you take “Tier I” Kerry battleground states (five of them MI, MN, NH, PA & WA) to be states where he is ahead above the margin of error, adding the electoral votes gives Kerry only 245. Still not enough to win. If you make another set of “Tier II” Kerry battleground states as states where Gore won and Kerry is ahead (OR, IA, NM, WI), then Kerry wins with a total electoral vote of 274. In other words each one of these 9 states is a Kerry MUST WIN, since any of these in the Bush column and Bush wins. OTOW, what is interesting is that there isn’t a single battleground state where Gore won last time and Bush is ahead now. I’m not a professional politician but it must be easier to convince someone to vote Dem again, than to get people to change their mind and admit they were wrong 4 years ago.
Still, although this proves it really is a ballgame,
Kerry has the advantage in turnovers and hopefully politics is like football….
The strategy should be to pound on the four Tier II states (and throw in Nevada (cheap), West Virginia(maybe?) and Florida GOTV), focus on the Tier I states and hope for the best in Missouri, Tennessee and maybe West Virginia.
But what about Colorado?
A lot of people in Ohio work/ed in industries at least tangentially related to Defense, so there’s that. The state has also been leaning right over the past few years – I think in part due to the flagging influence of organized labor as the jobless rates grow.
Put it another way: Bush leads is 3 of 16 swing states.
1. Bush’s lead in NV is 0.6% and the WSJ paints it bright red!
2. Arkansas is a swing state?
3. What’s up with Ohio? Did all the unemployed move to Illinois?