Building an American voter

Reviewing Trump's primary performance, chaos in the crosstabs, frequent voters lean Democratic, Nate Silver's plans, Americans ❤️ governors

No. 311 | April 19, 2024

🤝 2024: The Coalitions

Can you build an American voter? (The Economist)

“The race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is very close. Over the first three months of 2024 the candidates were never more than three points apart in our average of national polls, with Mr Trump narrowly ahead for most of that time. That is new for Mr Trump: in his two previous presidential campaigns he never led a general-election polling average for a single day. More worrying still for Mr Biden, Mr Trump is ahead in several of the swing states that he lost in 2020. The outcome in half a dozen states— Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—is likely to prove decisive. A small but critical slice of voters who plumped for Mr Biden back then are now telling pollsters that they plan to defect. Who are they?

To find out, we built a statistical model to assess how a hypothetical voter might cast a ballot, based on their demographic traits. Our data come from YouGov, an online pollster, which every week surveys over a thousand people about their demographic profile, voting history and voting intentions. We combined all its survey results since January 2023 to get a detailed portrait of Americans’ voting preferences. Use the drop-down menus below to plug in any combination of attributes—age, sex, religion and more—to construct a hypothetical American and see our estimate of their vote. Or press shuffle to see a voter at random. Our model will continuously update to incorporate each week’s YouGov survey.”

John J. DiIulio, Jr.: Biden, Trump, and the 4 categories of white votes (Brookings Institution)

“Former President Donald J. Trump is now the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee. Looking ahead to Trump’s rematch with President Joe Biden in November, some analysts believe that Trump’s electoral base is expanding to include more Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters.

Undoubtedly so. But the evidence that Democrats are ‘hemorrhaging’ minority support and are on the losing side of an impending ‘racial realignment’ is less clear than Trump supporters hope and than Biden supporters fear. Likewise, seven months out from Election Day, Biden’s post-State of the Union surge in the polls is neither important nor insignificant.”

🔴 2024: The Republicans

J. Miles Coleman: Where Trump’s Primary Showing Was (And Wasn’t) Especially Strong (Sabato’s Crystal Ball)

“Though former President Donald Trump easily won most GOP primaries this year, some areas stood out to us.

By comparing how Trump did in each county to how he did overall in each state, we can get a better idea of how his coalition is shaping up.

Geographically, Trump beat his statewide primary share in a majority of counties in most states.

Meanwhile, and not surprisingly, Trump tended to struggle in areas that are Democratic, or blue-trending, in general elections, although there were some exceptions.”

📊 2024: The Polls

Lackshya Jain and Giacomo Squatriti: Chaos In The Crosstabs (Split Ticket)

“Over the course of this election cycle, perhaps no single demographic has received more attention than young voters, which many polls now suggest to be increasingly Trump-curious. This has been observed alongside a similarly shocking swing toward Biden among elderly voters. If these surveys are correct, then our political landscape would be undergoing an incredible, unprecedented age-based shift in public opinion, despite 2024 being a rematch election in a period of record polarization.

To better understand and test this notion, we conducted two surveys. The first was a small, but focused, poll of 255 young voters, weighted by race, gender, and partisanship to be representative of the age group, with respondents probabilistically sampled from a voter file and interviewed, crucially, via live texting.”

Dan Hopkins: The less you vote, the more you back Trump (538)

“In 2016, former President Donald Trump was a political outsider looking to win the GOP nomination for president. In part, his campaign sought to appeal to voters who were disenchanted with politics.

Despite that, though, Trump wasn't significantly more popular with infrequent voters than with consistent voters. In a poll I conducted in January and February 2016 via GfK's KnowledgePanel, respondents who hadn't voted in any of the three prior general elections (2010, 2012 and 2014) supported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 3 percentage points. For respondents who had voted in all of those elections, Clinton's lead was only slightly larger: 6 points.”

Nate Silver: Announcing 2024 election model plans (Silver Bulletin)

“As much as I might dream of spending election night on a beach in Thailand, there’s no escaping the fact that I’m going to have a lot of my mental bandwidth devoted to the election whether I want to or not. So since I’ve teased at this long enough, here’s the headline: I’ll be running a presidential election forecast again this year — basically the same model that I’ve run every year since 2008 (formerly under the auspices of FiveThirtyEight). The model will run here at Silver Bulletin: I’ll publish polling averages for everyone, and probabilistic forecasts and additional commentary and data for paying subscribers.

However, the pace will be different this year. Instead of constant updates, I’ll instead initially run the numbers once per week, but then more frequently after Labor Day. The purpose of this is twofold. First, it allows me more opportunity to put the numbers into proper context — I’m not sure there’s a lot of journalistic value in constant updates when there’s not a lot going on. But also, this way leaves me enough time to accomplish the other things I have on my list, including continuing to cover plenty of non-election topics at this newsletter.”

Nate Cohn: Was Trump Benefiting From Being Out of the News? (The New York Times)

“Donald J. Trump appears to be a stronger candidate than he was four years ago, polling suggests, and not just because a notable number of voters look back on his presidency as a time of relative peace and prosperity.

It’s also because his political liabilities, like his penchant to offend and his legal woes, don’t dominate the news the way they once did.

In the last New York Times/Siena College poll, only 38 percent of voters said they’d been offended by Mr. Trump ‘recently,’ even as more than 70 percent said they had been offended by him at some point.”

📊  Public Opinion

Cooper Burton and Mary Radcliffe: Americans really love their governors (538)

“On a cool day last October, while federal officials in Washington, D.C., were squabbling to elect a new speaker of the House, Phil Scott was talking about construction.

The Vermont governor stood in a spacious workshop outside Montpelier, the state capital, surrounded by wooden beams and workers wearing bright blue hard hats. Over the sounds of power drills, Scott spoke for almost an hour about promoting careers in the trade industry, building more housing and expanding the state's workforce by encouraging immigration. He promoted his work with the state's all-Democratic congressional delegation twice and name-checked Patrick Leahy, the state's former Democratic U.S. senator, saying ‘we miss him.’”

Patricia Tevington, Justin Nortey, and Gregory A. Smith: Majority of U.S. Catholics Express Favorable View of Pope Francis (Pew Research Center)

“A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 75% of U.S. Catholics view Pope Francis favorably, down 8 percentage points since we last asked this question in 2021 and 15 points below his peak favorability rating, which was 90% in early 2015.

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis often has received favorable ratings from 80% or more of U.S. Catholics. He generally has been viewed more positively than his immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, but less positively than Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II.”

Harvard Youth Poll (Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics)

“A national poll released today by the Institute of Politics (IOP) at Harvard Kennedy School indicates that among 18-to-29-year-olds nationwide, more than half of young Americans say they will definitely be voting in the Presidential election this Fall. But findings show that among those likely voters, levels of support varied significantly among different subgroups.

The poll also finds: Broad support for a permanent ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war; Economic concerns continue to be top of mind for young voters; Confidence in public institutions continues to decline.”