So the big news at this time would be that both DJT and Biden are declining with the most recent months polling.
Biden has effectively lost any gains he made with his strong performance with the State of the Union. It looks like he’ll be sub 40 going again, where he was dipping into the high 30’s around December. Keep in mind that Biden’s quarterly current polling places him in as the lowest polling president ever with regards to economic performance.
President Joe Biden averaged 38.7% job approval during his recently completed 13th quarter in office, which began on Jan. 20 and ended April 19. None of the other nine presidents elected to their first term since Dwight Eisenhower had a lower 13th-quarter average than Biden.
Interestingly, Trump has not been able to make any real gains from Bidens record under-performance for an incumbent. Trump is also slipping in the polling from a stable 44% that has been fairly consistent post Presidency, to now nudging into the high 30s. This decline began around the time of the start of the ongoing hush money trial and with betting markets putting it at a ~70% probability of a guilty verdict. So the gamblers are for once not putting their money on Teflon Don, but its extremely unclear how this will effect Trumps polls nationally.
In other news, Robert “the brain worms made me do it” Kennedy has failed to catapult into relevancy since his surge in late March. Kennedy’s overall polling numbers have declined with both Biden and Trumps. Its still disagreed upon whom Kennedy is drawing voters from more significantly, but its becoming clear that he’ll need something big to be able to capitalize the moment into something larger. Anecdotally, Kennedy’s campaign has been compared to Ross Perot’s infamous 1992 run that is often attributed to the reason why George Bush Sr. lost that election.
In summary, it looks like we’re in a race to the bottom among voters this election cycle. Obvious causes for this on the Biden side are his position on Israel/ Gaza, student protests, and the refusal to hold Israel accountable in any meaningful way. On the Trump side we have an ongoing criminal trial, as well as renowned puppy-killer Kristi Noem taking much of the headlines. Is there a chance that the worms in RFK Jr’s brain might give him a clever idea that can catapult him into the 20-30 point range where he can represent a competitive alternative to either major party?
I’ll be posting another update in around 30 days, and as polling increases frequency as we get closer to election day, I may increase this posting to around 15 days depending on the availability of data.
Cheers and happy polling!
Data: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/
Interesting that both Trump and Biden have recently hit a slump in the past few days, as I don’t recall anything particularly damning coming out for either of them in the past few weeks (odd if it’s the hush money trial that hurts Trump). I feel like the RFK brain worm thing seemed to just start blowing up in the past day or two, so the fallout from that may still be on the way and may hurt him, which may end up helping Biden more, as RFK seems to have a more Left-leaning platform. In more normal times, admitting that parasitic worms ate at least a part of your brain might’ve been more than enough to torpedo a candidate’s campaign, but… I somehow won’t be surprised if he’s still campaigning in November.
Well keep in mind polling lags 2-3 weeks, so the student protest stuff, specifically Bidens response, and most of the Trump trial stuff won’t show up in the polling till next month. These would only really be reflective of the very beginning of those news cycles that are still pretty nascent. Like wise with the brain worms.
My read is that the entire slate is deeply unpopular, with the exception of Kennedy, who is rising rapidly with the pro brain worms crowd.