The RFK X-Factor
The RFK X-Factor
Voters approve of Trump's presidency, blaming Biden for the end of Roe, Biden's Midwest path, AI tools in school, population rebound
No. 315 | May 17, 2024
📊 2024: The Polls
Shane Goldmacher and Neil Vigdor: R.F.K. Jr. is 2024's X Factor, New Polls Show, Fueled by Young Voters and Social Media (The New York Times)
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is polling stronger than any third-party candidate has in decades, pulling in roughly 10 percent of registered voters across the battleground states as he saps support from both President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, a new series of polls has found.
The overall results in the Biden versus Trump contest were virtually unchanged when Mr. Kennedy was included in the polls conducted by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer. But beneath the surface of that seeming stability, the surveys revealed how Mr. Kennedy, powered by social media and younger voters, has emerged as an unpredictable X factor in what would otherwise be a 2020 rematch.
With less than six months until the election, the faction of the electorate giving Mr. Kennedy early support exposes some of the vulnerabilities inside the president’s Democratic coalition. Mr. Biden dropped all the way to 33 percent in a five-candidate race, an alarmingly low share of the vote for an incumbent president. The series of polls focused on what are expected to be the most contested states this fall: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”
Ruth Igielnik: A Simple Experiment Reveals Why It's So Hard to Measure R.F.K. Jr.'s Support (The New York Times)
“On top of all the other challenges that pollsters have faced in the past two presidential elections, this year has an additional, potentially significant, complication: a well-known third-party candidate.
Measuring support for third-party candidates has long been a particular challenge for pollsters. But it has been decades since the country has seen a third-party candidate as prominent as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has an average of about 10 percent of the vote in national polls.
Historically, polls overstate support for third-party candidates. When it comes to Mr. Kennedy, the biggest question may be by how much.
Consider this: In a two-part experiment conducted by The New York Times and the research firm Ipsos, a seemingly subtle difference across two versions yielded significantly different results for Mr. Kennedy.
What’s more, a candidate who is not on the ballot anywhere — a Times editor picked for inclusion thanks to his generic-sounding name — received a non-negligible share of support, highlighting just how much support for third-party candidates can come down to frustration with major-party candidates and a yearning for more options.”
Ronald Brownstein: Biden's Growing Challenge: Voters are Warming to Trump's Presidency (CNN)
”During Donald Trump’s four years in the White House, he was famously the only president whose job approval rating never reached 50% in Gallup Organization polls since the firm began systematically tracking that measure in the 1940s.
But now more positive retrospective assessments of Trump’s record in office are setting off warning flares for Democrats — especially as President Joe Biden’s own approval ratings remain stuck at historically low levels. In a CNN poll from April, 55% of Americans said they considered Trump’s presidency a success — a big jump from the 41% who viewed his presidency so positively when he left office in January 2021, according to a CNN survey from the time.
If Biden is to win a second term, ‘the fact that Trump is getting this level of credit cannot stand,’ said Democratic pollster Jay Campbell, who conducts surveys on the economy with a Republican partner for CNBC.
It’s not unusual for approval ratings of presidents to rise out of office. The difference is that none of Trump’s defeated predecessors sought to return to the White House four years later. The public’s shifting ratings of those former presidents was of interest mostly to historians; this year, these reassessments will help decide control of the White House.”
Claire Cain Miller, Ruth Igielnik, and Margot Sanger-Katz: 17% of Voters Blame Biden for the End of Roe (The New York Times)
“Nearly one in five voters in battleground states says that President Biden is responsible for ending the constitutional right to abortion, a new poll found, despite the fact that he supports abortion rights and that his opponent Donald J. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who made it possible to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Trump supporters and voters with less education were most likely to attribute responsibility for abortion bans to Mr. Biden, but the misperception existed across demographic groups. Twelve percent of Democrats hold Mr. Biden responsible, according to New York Times/Siena College polls in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin and a Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena poll in Pennsylvania.
‘I think the buck stops with him, so he had the ability to fight that, and that’s not what I’m hearing that he did,’ said Terri Yonemura, 62, an abortion rights supporter in Las Vegas who said she would not vote for Mr. Trump, but is unsure about Mr. Biden, so may not vote at all.”
Nate Cohn: Trump Leads in 5 Key States, as Young and Nonwhite Voters Express Discontent With Biden (The New York Times)
“Donald J. Trump leads President Biden in five crucial battleground states, a new set of polls shows, as a yearning for change and discontent over the economy and the war in Gaza among young, Black and Hispanic voters threaten to unravel the president’s Democratic coalition.
The surveys by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found that Mr. Trump was ahead among registered voters in a head-to-head matchup against Mr. Biden in five of six key states: Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden led among registered voters in only one battleground state, Wisconsin.
[You can find the full results of the polls, including the exact questions that were asked, here. You can see answers to common questions about our polling process here.]
The race was closer among likely voters. Mr. Trump led in five states as well, but Mr. Biden edged ahead in Michigan while trailing only narrowly in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. While Mr. Biden won all six of those states in 2020, victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin would be enough for him to win re-election, provided he won everywhere else he did four years ago.”
🗳️ 2024: The Battlegrounds
Nathaniel Rakich: Biden's Path to Winning the Electoral College Runs Through the Midwest (538)
“With 174 days — fewer than six months — left until Election Day, we're now within the window where general-election polling has some predictive value— although it is still subject to plenty of change. And according to 538's newly released polling averages, former President Donald Trump narrowly leads President Joe Biden, 41.2 percent to 40.5 percent, in national polls (as of Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. Eastern).
But as any election analyst worth their salt will tell you, we elect the president via the Electoral College, not the popular vote. And in the last couple presidential elections, the Electoral College has benefited Republicans. In 2020, Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5 percentage points, but he won Wisconsin — the state that tipped him over the 270 electoral votes he needed to win — by only 0.6 points (representing a 3.9-point Electoral College bias toward Trump). And in 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1 points, but she lost the tipping-point state, again Wisconsin, by 0.8 points — a 2.9-point Electoral College bias”
🗣️ Public Opinion
Broad Public Support for Legal Abortion Persists 2 Years After Dobbs (Pew Research Center)
“Nearly two years after the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a national right to abortion, a majority of Americans continue to express support for abortion access.
About six-in-ten (63%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. This share has grown 4 percentage points since 2021 – the year prior to the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe.
The new Pew Research Center survey, conducted April 8-14, 2024, among 8,709 adults, surfaces ongoing – and often partisan – divides over abortion attitudes: Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (85%) overwhelmingly say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, with near unanimous support among liberal Democrats. By comparison, Republicans and Republican leaners(41%) are far less likely to say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. However, two-thirds of moderate and liberal Republicans still say it should be.”
Luona Lin: A Quarter of U.S. Teachers Say AI Tools Do More Harm Than Good in K-12 Education (Pew Research Center)
“As some teachers start to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in their work, a majority are uncertain about or see downsides to the general use of AI tools in K-12 education, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in fall 2023.
A quarter of public K-12 teachers say using AI tools in K-12 education does more harm than good. About a third (32%) say there is about an equal mix of benefit and harm, while only 6% say it does more good than harm. Another 35% say they aren’t sure.
High school teachers are more likely than elementary and middle school teachers to hold negative views about AI tools in education.
About a third of high school teachers (35%) say these tools do more harm than good. Roughly a quarter of middle school teachers (24%) and 19% of elementary school teachers say the same.
Fewer than one-in-ten teachers at all levels say these tools do more good than harm.
Some 47% of elementary school teachers say they aren’t sure about the impact of AI tools in K-12 education. That is much larger than the shares of middle and high school teachers who say this.”
👫 Demographics
Population Rebounds for Many Cities in Northeast and Midwest (United States Census Bureau)
“Large cities in the Northeast and Midwest grew in 2023, reversing earlier population declines, according to Vintage 2023 Population Estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Cities with populations of 50,000 or more grew by an average of 0.2% in the Northeast and 0.1% in the Midwest after declining an average of 0.3% and 0.2%, respectively, in 2022. Those in the West went up by an average of 0.2% from 2022 to 2023. Cities in the South grew the fastest – by an average 1.0%.
‘The population growth across the South in 2023 was driven by significant numeric and percentage gains among its cities,’ said Crystal Delbé, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division. ‘Thirteen of the 15 fastest-growing cities were in the South, with eight in Texas alone.’
Topping the list of fastest-growing cities with a population of 20,000 or more: Celina, Texas, (near Dallas), whose population grew by 26.6%, more than 53 times that of the nation’s growth rate of 0.5%.
Meanwhile, San Antonio, Texas, added more people (roughly 22,000) than any other city in 2023, reclaiming its No. 1 spot on the list of gainers and pushing it close to the 1.5 million population milestone.”
