The voters “forgiving” Trump and “punishing” Biden: Obama pollster on “the biggest question” of 2024

If the public opinion polls and other data are to be believed, President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign – and by implication the future of American democracy – is in big trouble. If the presidency is the ultimate bully pulpit, President Biden has been too afraid to use it —at the detriment of us all.

For example, President Biden’s economy is historically strong, but the American people still feel that inflation, and in particular food and gas prices, are extremely high. The American people do not care about the technical details of how and why (price gouging and corporate profiteering); all that matters is that they are hurting. Moreover, the Biden administration and the Democratic Party’s spokespeople have been reluctant to target corporate greed as a winning political issue. Ultimately, that may prove to be a politically fatal miscalculation.

The 2024 election is less than a year away. President Biden and the Democrats are rapidly running out of time to go on the offense and shift the narrative. In an attempt to better understand what is actually happening with President Biden and Donald Trump and the early 2024 presidential polls, what Biden and the Democrats can potentially do to improve his political fortunes, and what may happen next, I recently spoke with Mike Kulisheck, the senior vice president of the Benenson Strategy Group, a consulting and marketing firm that worked as Barack Obama’s pollsters during his 2012 re-election campaign.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

We spoke several months ago about President Biden and the Democrats’ polling numbers and the state of American politics in this time of crisis more generally. So much has happened since then. How are you feeling?  

The 2024 race feels somewhat frozen. Instead of clarifying choices, the war in the Middle East, ongoing fight in Ukraine, chaos in the House, Trump’s legal woes, and ongoing economic worries raise questions about the incumbent without necessarily empowering the challenger. 

Polling indicates an electorate that is unhappy with its choices for 2024. Neither Trump nor Biden is popular. Voters across the spectrum are vocal with concerns about both candidates, whether it is age, indictments, performance in office, or threats to democracy. The war in the Middle East reveals division in the Democratic coalition, particularly among younger voters. The Republican Party in the House is dysfunctional, except for its knee-jerk support for the ex-president. Being able to pass a stop-gap bill to keep the government open is a low bar for success.

I see campaigns that need to make clearer to voters what these big events mean for them. Recent polls should be read as a message to President Biden and the Democrats. They show starkly that a scenario exists where Trump glides to “re-election.”

It feels like we are potentially at an inflection point for the Biden campaign where it calibrates to the realities on the ground – namely, soft support among key parts of the Democratic base, ongoing concerns about prices (no matter what the economic statistics say about inflation, wages, and unemployment), and a general unhappiness about where we are as a country – both internally and externally. 

In terms of public opinion polls and other ways of measuring the public mood, how much have things changed – or not – in the Age of Trump and beyond?   

Polling is about understanding the universe you are measuring. The Age of Trump has been marked by the way the political universe changes in small but important ways when Trump is on the ballot. At my firm, we are spending a lot of time thinking about sampling and data collection methodologies because, as pollsters, we need to be talking to the right people in the right proportions. The Trump effect is real and on poll after poll, we test our assumptions about the make-up of the electorate. At the same time, when it comes to polling, rigor is rigor. We are worrying about the same things during the current Age of Trump as we worried about in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. 

As an aside, polling in the Age of Trump must be especially nimble. Polling about breaking news can be more complicated when the playing field is being rocked constantly by new information. While the news cycle is fast in general, when Trump is involved, the changes seem to come faster and are bigger. We take this into account when writing questionnaires and interpreting results. Getting at the fundamentals in every poll is particularly important, as it serves to anchor the data and findings, no matter how much is going on in the news cycle. You have to anticipate how the fast-moving events swirling around Trump change – or do not change – how people view the broader political landscape and their choices. 

How do we separate the noise from the signal one year out from the 2024 Election?

Outlier polls are the blaring noise that make the signal in polling harder to hear. Outlier polls get disproportionate attention – pretty much by definition – because they often include a man-bites-dog story. As I look at our numbers and public polling, I focus on the metrics and subgroups that have comparable history. For example, the first thing I look at when I read a poll is party identification and I compare it back to previous polls in the same cycle and previous cycles for the sample geography. Similarly, I look at the way young voters, voters of color, women are behaving in polls. 

I am a pollster and I really like numbers, but there is art and science to separating the signal from the noise. When a poll feels out-of-step with what you’ve seen or know from years of work, my experience is that it is worth digging deeper and asking questions. That said, today’s outlier poll can turn into the first chapter of a new story. You have to be open to change too. 

Rather than over-focusing on the horserace numbers in a poll, I believe it is smarter to look for the story the numbers tell. The horserace can be +3 or -3, but the race is close either way. Going beyond the horserace, what are the numbers telling us? Figuring out the story is about being sensitive to the fact that polling data are real people’s voices. Through the polls, people are telling us about their hopes, fears, aspirations, and concerns. Our polls are opportunities for everyday Americans to have their voices heard.

What is the early polling and other data actually telling us about the 2024 election? How are you and your fellow professionals sorting through all this information, which is often contradictory?

For me, the biggest question is whether support for Biden and the Democrats among key subgroups like younger voters and voters of color snap back to what we saw in 2020 and 2022, or if the openness to Trump and/or third parties that we’ve seen in some recent polls is real and long-term. 

This is where understanding the context within which voters are viewing their choices and answering polling questions matters. We know voters are unhappy with their likely options in 2024 – a Biden-Trump rematch of 2020. Many voters are looking at what they perceive as a suboptimal choice through the lens of higher prices, a dysfunctional government in Washington, DC, war, etc. 

In the polls showing Biden doing poorly with young voters and voters of color compared to 2020, are these voters ‘punishing’ Biden in the poll to hold him accountable? Or, after nearly three years of the Biden presidency, are they looking at Trump with fresh (and forgiving) eyes? Or are they giving up on Biden in favor of a third-party candidate who can’t win but feels more in line with their views? These kinds of questions cannot be gleaned from tracking candidate preference, job approval numbers, or favorability ratings. It requires digging into voters’ hopes, their values, and their fears about the future. Taking the time to understand voters’ deeper perspectives clarifies their answers to topline questions like, “For whom will you vote for president in 2024?” 

Can we have too much data and information about an election and political trends?  

I’m not sure we have too much data, but I believe data can be confusing. Different methods serve different purposes. Think about the types of data that get reported on: national surveys, state surveys, battleground state surveys, and focus groups. Rather than laddering up to a better understanding of the state of politics, combining these data in people’s heads – without nuanced explanation – can lead to misinterpretation as well as overinterpretation. 

From the point of view of the Democrats and Biden, how does the political battlefield look now as the 2024 Election approaches? For Trump and the Republicans?

There is a lot going on at the moment and I see both parties (and leading candidates) being more defensive than I might have expected as we head into 2024. 

The Democrats are fretting about President Biden’s campaign and messaging. They have not figured out how to address concerns about Biden’s age or thread the needle on the economy. Their contrast with the Republicans and Trump is a work in progress. 

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The Republicans are dealing with the reality that their likely standard-bearer is making as much news in court rooms as on the campaign trail. Recent election results show how the party is on its heels when it comes to abortion. And the House of Representatives has a Speaker but lacks leadership and direction. 

Several observations for Biden and the Democrats: First, President Biden is uniquely skilled at hearing people and connecting with their concerns. There is a lot to be worried about and I believe Biden can do a better job at connecting with voters and reassuring them about the state of the nation, the economy, and the world by sharing his natural empathy. You can’t change how people are experiencing prices in their daily lives, but you can change how the President talks about inflation. Does he talk about the good inflation numbers that came out last week in terms of macroeconomic indicators or does he explain what those declining inflation numbers mean for everyday Americans? 

Second, the Democrats must drive the narrative that this election is a deeply important choice about our nation’s future. Democracy is an issue that people care about and there is research that points to its importance in 2022. Trump is repeatedly saying the quiet part out loud. Make Trump’s frightening statements about what he plans for his second term real for voters. Democrats need to explain to voters what Trump 2.0 means for them, for the future, and for the world their children will live in. 

Trump and the Republicans have a lot of baggage. Their priority is to keep the focus on Biden, his age, and what he has not done in office. They need to find a way to neutralize the abortion issue. Trump and the Republicans will do better with an electorate that is angry and doesn’t see clear differences between the parties and the candidates. The muddier the water, the clearer the path forward is for Trump.    

What about Trump’s criminal and civil trials?

The effect of Trump’s trials cannot be ignored or underestimated. We fielded a poll in August and found about one-in-four Republicans saying that the ex-President’s legal troubles made them less likely to vote for Trump. For context, Trump only lost about 6% of Republicans in 2020. His legal troubles could easily make the difference in a tight race. 

So far, Trump’s trials are rallying Republicans around him in the GOP primary. The primary calendar probably works in Trump’s favor as he tries to secure the nomination. That said, there is a significant unknown around how Trump actually being convicted might affect the race. We could find ourselves in a position where Trump wins the nomination and is then convicted in a trial. Where does that leave Republicans? It seems unlikely his base will defect, but reaching out to Independents will likely be more difficult. The role of third parties could be outsized in this scenario. Republican-leaning voters could be turned off to voting for Trump again, but not be ready to vote to re-elect President Biden.

How are third-party candidates (and challengers from within the Democratic Party) impacting the polls and prospective support for Biden?

At this point, the effect of third-party challengers is not entirely clear, though the evidence would suggest Biden is being hurt more than Trump. I would expect the likes of Jill Stein and Cornel West to pull voters more from Biden. The RFK effect is a little harder to pin down, but his inclusion in several recent polls shows his candidacy costing Biden a bit more than Trump. 

Biden and the Democrats need to campaign to win the support of people who might currently be attracted to third-party candidacies. They cannot take for granted that as Election Day approaches, people on the left who support Stein will end up casting their votes for Biden. Democrats need to earn their votes.

There is a two-pronged strategy for pulling third-party voters into the Democratic column. Democrats must not only reach them on issues but also make the 2024 race a choice about bigger things, such as our democracy. This requires taking people seriously and not dismissing their worries and concerns. 

How do you think things will look in a few months as the presidential election is even closer?  

More opinions and perceptions get baked into the cake the closer you get to elections. For example, we will begin to see how much of the current support for third party candidates is real versus a form of protest about a choice between Biden and Trump. The economy has been a drag on support for Biden. People are reminded about inflation every time they pay more for groceries and just about everything ese. There are macro-level signs that economic conditions – especially inflation – are actually improving.

Looking ahead, which economy will voters have in their heads when they actually vote in 11 months? The one defined by rising prices or the one that feels like it is getting better? The fact that Trump has been indicted (91 times) is already baked in the cake, but the effect of standing trial and possibly being convicted will also impact the race, but we can’t fully understand how until it happens – because it is so unprecedented. There are a lot of questions about what exactly we will know in a few months, but we will definitely know more than we do right now.