Here are the key dynamics in a new batch of Biden-Trump polls

Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest election developments of 2024 — a year in which truly anything can happen, judging by my Minnesota Timberwolves making the Western Conference finals.

(Can you tell I’m excited? I can barely work.)

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The big moment

We’re now a week away from closing arguments in Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial, about one month from the first presidential debate and about two months from the first national party convention. Which means things are getting real.

And that, combined with some rare new swing-state polling, means it’s a good time for a reset on where the race stands now. Here are some key trends and X-factors I’ve picked out of recent polls, along with what they could mean come November.

1. Voters will vote for Democrats — just not necessarily Biden

Rarely have President Biden’s struggles to lock down his base been crystallized like they have been in recent days.

We’ve known for a while that certain parts of the Democratic coalition are balking at supporting him in potentially crucial ways — young voters, Black voters and Hispanic voters, especially.

But what’s become clear recently is that this is very much a Biden-specific problem rather than a broader Democratic issue.

A swing-state poll last week from the New York Times and Siena College showed a generic Democratic Senate candidate led a generic Republican by five points. But Biden trailed Trump by six points. That’s a 11-point gap between Democratic Senate candidates and the president.

We’ve also seen big gaps when you ask about actual Senate candidates. The Times/Siena poll in Nevada showed Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) doing 14 points better than Biden, on the margins (i.e., Rosen ahead by two but Biden trailing by 12). Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) did 11 points better. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) did eight points better, and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) did seven points better.

A new CBS News/YouGov poll in Arizona released over the weekend showed an even bigger gap: Gallego led Republican Kari Lake by 13 points, even as Biden trailed Trump by five — a whopping 18-point difference.

One way to look at this is that those votes are gettable for Biden; another is that he’s uniquely unpalatable to voters otherwise supportive of Democrats.

2. An increasingly important North-South divide

America has been pitted between North and South a time or two — or so I’ve read. And that could repeat itself in a pretty interesting way in 2024.

The Times/Siena poll tested the six most important swing states. While Biden trailed significantly in all three Sun Belt states (Arizona, Georgia and Nevada), he was more competitive in the three Midwestern states (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin).

And it’s not just this poll. The current FiveThirtyEight poll averages show Biden underperforming his 2020 showing by more than six points in competitive states south of the extended Mason-Dixon Line. But the president runs within three points of his 2020 numbers in northern ones.

A significant reason that might be the case: Biden’s struggles with Black and Hispanic voters.

If that holds, it means Biden needs — like, needs — his “firewall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

3. Abortion rights might not save Biden

Abortion rights have been a big winner recently — and a winner for Democrats. But they might not be the game changer Biden needs right now.

The Times/Siena poll showed Americans favored at least “mostly legal” abortion by a 36-point margin (64 to 28 percent). But they preferred Biden on the issue of abortion by a much smaller margin: 11 points (49 to 38 percent).

A potential reason: Many voters don’t really blame the Supreme Court’s very unpopular nixing of Roe v. Wade on Trump. The Times poll showed just more than half of independents said Trump was most responsible for eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion. (He nominated the three justices who provided the decisive votes.) And the CBS/YouGov polls showed fewer than 4 in 10 voters in Arizona and Florida said they “blame” Trump for Roe being overturned.

Those two states have become flash points in the abortion debate, amid harsh GOP-led bans and ballot measures to reverse those bans. But there’s no sign the issue is helping Biden, who is running behind his 2020 numbers in both states.

4. Trump’s trial still looms potentially large

Next week, the moment we’ve been hypothesizing about for more than a year — ever since Trump’s first indictment — could arrive: What happens if the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is convicted of a crime?

Some pundits dismiss the Manhattan case as a relative pittance compared with Trump’s three other indictments and suggest the outcome won’t matter. A Quinnipiac University poll last month, for instance, showed 6 in 10 voters said a potential guilty verdict made “no difference” to them. (Nearly as many voters, in fact, said a conviction would make them more likely to back Trump as those who said it would make them less likely.)

But it could still matter — particularly in a close race. And the reality of a convicted Trump might be different from the prospect.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted late last month showed 80 percent of Trump backers said a conviction wouldn’t change their vote. But 4 percent said it would, and 16 percent said it would at least cause them to “reconsider.” A CNN poll showed 24 percent said they “might reconsider.”

To possibly “reconsider” is a pretty soft commitment, and given these voters are inclined toward Trump in the first place, it wouldn’t be surprising if many or most of them stuck with him. But losing even 4 percent of his support could be enough to swing the election; the last two presidential races were decided by about 1 percent of voters in the decisive states.

And voting for a convicted felon is also a scenario many casual voters probably haven’t thought through.

A potentially telling finding on that front: Further Ipsos polling last month showed 9 percent of Trump backers said they wouldn’t vote for him if he were convicted. But that number jumped to 20 percent if he were imprisoned.

Of course, there’s also the prospect of a hung jury or an acquittal, which could juice Trump’s claims of political persecution. Americans haven’t bought that argument so far, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t.

A momentous (pair of) chart(s)

Related to some of the above points, I recently noticed a pretty interesting factoid: The Times/Siena poll showed more voters in the six swing states said there was “not really any chance” they’d vote for Biden (52 percent) than for Trump (46 percent).

This is somewhat counterintuitive to some. It’s the belief — or at least the hope — of many Democrats that Trump has a low “ceiling,” meaning the maximum percentage of voters who might vote for him. Trump, after all, didn’t clear 47 percent in either the 2016 or 2020 elections. The idea is that, if Biden can just rally the usual Democratic base, the path to victory there.

Well, perhaps not so much. It turns out this isn’t the only poll to show it’s actually Biden with the lower ceiling. While polls in 2020 showed double-digits more “Never Trump” voters, there are now more “Never Biden” voters in every recent poll that has asked this question.

And in 3 of 4 such polls, 50 percent or more of the electorate wrote off Biden completely. To the extent these polls are accurate, that makes Biden’s math significantly more difficult.

Take a moment to read:

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Fernande Dalal

Update: 2024-07-12

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