For all of Alvin Bragg‘s attempts to hijack the news cycle with a cavalcade of scorned friends and flings of Donald Trump, the former president has proven stubbornly resilient in his swing-state leads over President Joe Biden.
According to the latest slate of head-to-head polling from the New York Times and Siena College, the Republican is up by 14 percentage points over the Democratic incumbent among registered voters in Nevada, 10 points in Georgia, 7 points in Michigan, 7 points in Arizona, and 3 points in Pennsylvania. Only in Wisconsin does Trump trail Biden by 2 points, but among likely voters, Trump actually leads by 1 in Wisconsin, yet he trails by 1 point among likely voters in Michigan. His lead persists or grows in every other state.
A separate poll from the Financial Times explains why the sexcapades of Stormy Daniels haven’t cut through Trump’s lead: the continuous catastrophe that is Bidenomics.
After two straight months of rising personal consumption expenditures price inflation, consumer price index inflation, and wholesale inflation (three of the main inflation measures used by the Federal Reserve in its decision not to cut interest rates from their highest level in 23 years), nearly 3 out of 4 registered voters polled by FT-Michigan Ross said economic conditions are negative. Half of all respondents at least partially blamed Bidenomics for worsening the economic situation, with more than a third saying Biden’s policies hurt the economy a lot, the worst figure ever recorded by the pollster. A majority of respondents said they were personally worse off since Biden took office. All in all, Biden’s approval rating is underwater by 14 points, per the FT, 3 points fewer than his -17 net average approval rating aggregated by RealClearPolling.
The primary problem for Republicans is that Trump isn’t yet providing strong coattails to carry the rest of the swing-state tickets. Among registered voters from the New York Times/Siena poll, incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) leads likely Republican nominee Eric Hove in Wisconsin by 9 points. Incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) leads first-time Pennsylvania Republican nominee (but second-time candidate) David McCormick by 5 points. In Arizona, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) leads Republican Kari Lake by 4 points in the open race to replace independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), and incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) leads likely Republican nominee Sam Brown in Nevada by 2 points.
The reason? More Trump voters are disloyal to the down-ballot GOP than Biden voters are to Democrats. Whereas only 5% of Biden supporters polled by the New York Times back the Republican in the four swing states with a Senate seat up for reelection, 10% of Trump supporters back the Democrat.
Some of this comes down to the same cause of repeated disappointment for Republicans in recent midterm elections: candidate quality. Back in 2022, Lake already crashed and burned among heterodox Arizona voters in her failed bid for the governor’s mansion, and even McCormick, a far less polarizing candidate than Lake but himself a white-collar candidate for a Rust Belt electorate, famously lost to celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz for the Republican Senate nomination.
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Polling guru Sean Trende argues that mid-40s leads for these Democratic incumbents are weaker than they appear, as plenty of voters remain undecided in these down-ballot races, and even at the top of the ticket, the race will likely wind up closer than anyone expects today. But there’s a lesson for Republicans in the tea leaves.
Perhaps because Biden so flagrantly ignored his mandate to govern as a return to normalcy and instead pursued the most disastrous economic agenda since former President Jimmy Carter, the president’s personal brand has become even more toxic than the local Democratic Party brand in purple states. Running Trump, a known quantity with a proven record, provides Republicans with the most obvious line of attack: It’s the economy, stupid, and under Bidenomics, our paychecks really are 5% smaller than they were under Trump four years before.
