Here's a line that caught my eye in a June write-up of one of the first high-quality horse race polls of a battleground state taken after the Dobbs decision Supreme Court leak.
"The results of a USA Today/Suffolk University poll conducted June 10-13 show that the news for Democrats is a lot better than they have any right to expect," The Bulwark's Brent Orrell wrote. The Pennsylvania survey showed the Democratic Senate nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, leading his GOP challenger by 9 points while the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, held a 4-point advantage over his Republican challenger.
But Orrell's point marked the beginning of a phenomenon that political analysts have been grappling with ever since: President Joe Biden's approvals have tanked, inflation has soared, and the right track/wrong track numbers are abysmal, but many Democrats are looking competitive or even better this fall.
Wanna stick it to Republicans this fall? Let’s do this thing, right here, right now!
Nate Cohn's write up of the New York Times/Siena poll this week opened with a similar observation.
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The poll of registered voters gave Democrats a 1-point advantage in the generic ballot, whereas likely voters tilted 1 point in favor of Republicans.
Anything can happen between now and Election Day, but at this point the incongruent data points suggest we could very well be in for an anomaly of a midterm, where who's in the White House, how popular they are, and how satisfied voters are with their daily lives have little-to-no bearing on the final results in November.
Pundits, for instance, often refer to the exceedingly problematic mood of the electorate, where just 12% of registered voters say the country is on the right track. Normally, that would spell doom for Democrats, but instead (as I explained here) it suggests that nearly every voting demographic in the country is angry at something and they may not necessarily be holding Biden responsible for whatever it is.
Biden's approvals certainly don't help Democrats, but how much they actually hurt is a giant question mark this cycle. Many Democrats are outperforming them. Rather than this election becoming a referendum on how much voters like Biden, it may come down to a far more consequential question of which party they most fear having control.
As The Washington Post's Philip Bump notes, perhaps the weirdest aspect of Biden's unpopularity is the fact that it "doesn’t appear to be doing significant damage to the rest of his party."
Again, none of this is predictive of where things are headed this fall, but it does essentially blow up all the analysis that previously hinged on historic norms tied to which party controls the White House and how popular that party’s president is.
In short, any time a crystal-ball prediction of this year's midterms rests heavily on historical norms, presidential approvals, and right track/wrong track numbers without factoring in this year's statistical aberrations, it's not worth your time.
"The results of a USA Today/Suffolk University poll conducted June 10-13 show that the news for Democrats is a lot better than they have any right to expect," The Bulwark's Brent Orrell wrote. The Pennsylvania survey showed the Democratic Senate nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, leading his GOP challenger by 9 points while the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, held a 4-point advantage over his Republican challenger.
But Orrell's point marked the beginning of a phenomenon that political analysts have been grappling with ever since: President Joe Biden's approvals have tanked, inflation has soared, and the right track/wrong track numbers are abysmal, but many Democrats are looking competitive or even better this fall.
Wanna stick it to Republicans this fall? Let’s do this thing, right here, right now!
Nate Cohn's write up of the New York Times/Siena poll this week opened with a similar observation.
Campaign Action
The poll of registered voters gave Democrats a 1-point advantage in the generic ballot, whereas likely voters tilted 1 point in favor of Republicans.
Anything can happen between now and Election Day, but at this point the incongruent data points suggest we could very well be in for an anomaly of a midterm, where who's in the White House, how popular they are, and how satisfied voters are with their daily lives have little-to-no bearing on the final results in November.
Pundits, for instance, often refer to the exceedingly problematic mood of the electorate, where just 12% of registered voters say the country is on the right track. Normally, that would spell doom for Democrats, but instead (as I explained here) it suggests that nearly every voting demographic in the country is angry at something and they may not necessarily be holding Biden responsible for whatever it is.
Biden's approvals certainly don't help Democrats, but how much they actually hurt is a giant question mark this cycle. Many Democrats are outperforming them. Rather than this election becoming a referendum on how much voters like Biden, it may come down to a far more consequential question of which party they most fear having control.
As The Washington Post's Philip Bump notes, perhaps the weirdest aspect of Biden's unpopularity is the fact that it "doesn’t appear to be doing significant damage to the rest of his party."
Again, none of this is predictive of where things are headed this fall, but it does essentially blow up all the analysis that previously hinged on historic norms tied to which party controls the White House and how popular that party’s president is.
In short, any time a crystal-ball prediction of this year's midterms rests heavily on historical norms, presidential approvals, and right track/wrong track numbers without factoring in this year's statistical aberrations, it's not worth your time.