The Briefing, Vol. XII, Issue 14
This week:
- Biden’s leaky boat
- Trump will be competing for 322 electoral votes, Biden for just 270
- A new Hatch in the Senate?
President 2024
Biden the unfavorable: Joe Biden continues to post unfavorable ratings higher than those of Donald Trump — a fact that is remarkable, given Trump’s storied history as a love-him-or-hate-him figure. Biden’s minus-13 net rating on The Hill/DecisionDeskHQ average outstrips Trump’s minus-8, a fact that should have Republicans optimistic about their chances of ousting Biden this fall.
Another consideration is the new set of state-level polls released by Bloomberg-Morning Consult. Although they show a modest improvement for Biden, they continue to show a presidential race that will be fought not in North Carolina, Florida, or Arizona, but rather in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, all states that Trump lost in 2020. Trump and Biden are statistitically tied in all of these states in the new polling. It is not necessarily that important at this point that other polls show Trump doing better — what is important is that Arizona (Trump +5 or +6 if third parties are included), Georgia (Trump +7), and North Carolina (Trump +6) are all outside the margin of error, and may already be out of reach for Biden, or at least slipping out of his grasp.
Electoral College picture: There does not appear to be a single traditional Red state that Biden is in a position to claw away from Trump, as he did in 2020 when he carried Georgia and Arizona. Currently, the important Blue states that Trump carried in 2016 are all places where Biden is trailing or tied and needs to play defense.
Trump is already headed to Michigan and Wisconsin this week. It should also be noted that, although Pennsylvania is tied in the head-to-head poll that Bloomberg just released, Biden slips to a six-point deficit when third-party candidates are included. That may just suggest a polling irregularity, but it could also point to genuine momentum for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (who draws an impressive 7 percent support in that poll). That would be terrible for Biden, potentially making the race uncompetitive if it were to catch on. Trump, in contrast, bleeds almost no support to third-party candidates in Pennsylvania, whereas Biden loses seven points.
To return to the main point, as we have previously noted, it will be enough for Trump to tie in the electoral college (269 to 269), throwing the presidential contest to the U.S. House, if he can merely hold Arizona and Georgia, win Nevada (where he leads by several points in all recent polls), carry all of the other states he won in 2020, and then win Nebraska’s second congressional district. Note that this is true even if he cannot break through in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania.
By extension, this means he can win by carrying just one Biden 2020 state beyond Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. This is in part thanks in part to population loss in Blue states over the last decade, and in part due to the improvement in Trump’s polling from 2020.
Leaky boat: To put it another way, the current composition of the state polls suggests that Trump can afford to spend the entire year living in traditionally Blue states and competing for their electoral votes. If he keeps up the pressure in those four Blue states and forces Biden to defend them all, he will be competing for a total of 323 electoral votes (including the one in Nebraska). Biden, in contrast, at least based on the current picture, will have to hustle in a vigorous defensive battle and come from behind just in order to win even a bare-bones electoral majority of 270 votes — the exact minimum number required to win.
Biden is old and lacks energy. Yet he is in a leaky boat right now, using every one of his fingers and toes to plug a different hole. What will he do if Trump manages to make another state — say, Maine, New Hampshire, Virginia, or Colorado — competitive again?
Senate 2024
Utah: Brent Hatch (R), is not exactly an “outsider.” He is the son of the state’s late, long-serving Sen. Orrin Hatch (R), and a former official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. But he has been at least in the conversation for his father’s old Senate seat (now being vacated by Mitt Romney (R) ever since the only public poll taken of the race showed him in a close second-place back in late January.
Hatch, who is in his 60s, is now getting some air cover from a SuperPAC called “Conservative Outsider PAC,” which has committed $1.8 million to running television and radio ads. His most formidable opponent in that January poll is Rep. John Curtis (R), although there isn’t much evidence beyond that to provide a better picture of the race.
The primary election is June 25.
House 2024
Colorado-4: A nominating convention has chosen Greg Lopez (R) to run in the June special election for this heavily Republican seat, which has been vacated by the resigning Rep. Ken Buck (R).
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R), who has moved to this much more conservative Weld County-focused district for the 2024 election instead of the more swingy Western Colorado district she currently represents, was not one of the candidates under consideration. However, given that Lopez does not intend to run in the actual primary election and hold the seat beyond January, this is mildly helpful to her.
Boebert will be in the primary election the same day as the special election, although she is not considered the favorite to win. She just barely hung on to win her current seat in 2022.
Buck, the former district attorney of Weld County, first became famous during his losing 2010 U.S. Senate bid against Sen. Michael Bennet (D), whom he debated live on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Senate 2026
Kentucky: The Republican-held legislature is taking a second stab at blocking second-term Gov. Andy Beshear from replacing Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) with a Democrat (or even with himself, as a previous Democratic governor once did) in the event that he suddenly passes away or is forced to resign. The current and recently-passed law, which Beshear argues is unconstitutional, would force him to appoint a candidate from a list given him by the same party as the senator vacating the office.
The state Senate just passed, by an easily veto-proof margin, a bill that would instead put the seat up immediately for a special election, without any gubernatorial appointment power.
