Last week’s debate was not a good night for President Joe Biden – so much so that many Democrats have since called for the party to replace him with someone else as their presidential nominee. Part of that has been driven by a concern that the debate was hurting Biden with voters, and that some other Democrat would have a better chance of beating Donald Trump.
But is any of that actually true? Post-debate polls in the immediate aftermath showed a big spike in the number of voters who think Biden should drop out – but in spite of that, there’s been almost no change in the head-to-head matchup between Biden and Trump. Further, polls suggest it doesn’t really matter whom the Democrats nominate: all the top names stack up about the same against Trump, no better or worse than Biden.
That may be a surprising finding, but Public Policy Polling director Tom Jensen says it’s a product of several facts we already know: most voters have already made up their minds; interest in the race is lower this year than it’s been in the past; and the few remaining undecideds are more concerned about Biden’s policies than his capabilities.
97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck spoke with Jensen on Monday, four days after the debate. Click here to listen to their full conversation; the transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Aaron Keck: I’m going to make three guesses. I don’t know anything about what the impact of the debate has been on polling in the last few days, I’ve seen no numbers – so you’re going to tell me if I’m right or wrong on this – but I’m going to guess three things. There’s been a big increase in the number of people who think Biden should drop out. But in spite of that, there hasn’t been a huge change in the actual horse race (between Biden and Trump). And if Biden does drop out, and they slot another Democrat in, that actually wouldn’t affect the numbers too much either. How close am I to being right?
Tom Jensen: You’re one hundred percent correct. I’ve seen four polls come out since the debate … and in two of them, Trump’s doing better than he was before, but in two of them, Biden’s doing better than he was before. All the polls do agree that Trump won the debate, but there’s not that much real movement because of it, I think simply because most people are very much locked in (to their opinions).
I think it’s possible you’ll see a few polls this week where maybe Trump is doing a good deal better. But there’s a phenomenon in polling called differential non-response, where for a little while, one side or another will be more or less motivated to answer polls because of something that happens in the race – and so then the polls will look like they’re really different, but it’s really just because one team was less likely to answer for a little while. And this is the perfect condition for differential non-response: you may see Democrats less motivated to answer polls for a little while, if they were embarrassed or disappointed with Biden’s performance. But that rarely has a lasting impact. The same thing happened in the aftermath of the Access Hollywood tape coming out that was so damaging for Trump in 2016: for like a week or two, there were polls that showed Hillary Clinton way up, (but) then once that died down, the polls went right back to where they were before. So if you do see some really gaudy numbers for Trump this week, I would still expect that to be more temporary than permanent.
(On the) second part of your question: one national pollster, Data For Progress, tested basically every other (leading) Democrat versus Trump, and they all did basically the same (as Biden). So it’s not some magic bullet solution to get Biden off the ticket.
President Joe Biden walking off stage at a commercial break during a presidential debate with Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (Photo via AP Photo/Gerald Herbert.)
Keck: I was thinking about this in the context of what we’ve talked about in the past – and again, tell me if I’m wrong about this – but we’ve said this is all going to turn on the people who currently say they’re undecided. And what we’ve said about those folks is that they tend to be left-leaning voters who are disappointed with Biden. And a lot of (those) folks are disappointed with Biden primarily because of his stance or non-stance on the war in Gaza. They want a stronger stance in favor of Palestine, pushing back harder against Israel. And then you have this debate – where Biden’s not doing well, but Trump’s making it very clear that if he’s elected, he’s going to be much more pro-Israel, pushing them to do more in Gaza. And I can imagine being one of those undecided voters and saying, “yeah, Biden’s doing terrible, but this guy over here would be even worse.”
Jensen: Yeah. I think you’re right that a lot of the people who are still undecided (are) concerned with Biden more on the issues than his age. The other thing we know about those voters is that they tend to be pretty low-information voters – so they probably weren’t even watching the debate, or at least paying very close attention to it. That’s one thing about a debate in June: if you’re not somebody who’s a total (political) junkie, you’re probably not going to be paying that much attention to it.
One thing that has been sort of interesting about this election cycle: in general, there’s just less interest than there was in 2016 and 2020. And we really saw that in the ratings from the debate. I mean, millions (fewer) people watched it than the first debates the last few times around. So it shows how people are sort of burned out on this choice.
Keck: All of that is the state of the race. That said, you work with Democrats and Democratic campaigns. What would be your advice to the party or the presidential campaign right now?
Jensen: Well, they do need to just get Biden out there a lot more and showing a lot of energy. And they did a good job of that: Biden’s appearance in North Carolina on Friday was very well received, and people were like, “oh, this is a completely different Biden than we saw last night.”
And I think it’s worth commenting on the fact that the campaign sent Biden to North Carolina for his first appearance after the debate. They are still taking North Carolina seriously. I think some people maybe would’ve thought, in an election with these kinds of circumstances, that North Carolina would come off the battleground list. But it’s pretty obvious that the campaign really does still think that it can flip North Carolina. It’s the only state that Trump won in 2020 that the Biden campaign is still emphasizing. And we’ve done some private polling recently that has found the presidential race in North Carolina still very close.
Keck: What else are you seeing from polling numbers in the last couple of weeks?
Jensen: Well, even though I don’t think the debate was some sort of permanent catastrophic event for Biden, he definitely is in rough shape. We’ve done four statewide polls in various places across the country over the last couple weeks … (and) if you average them out, (Biden’s) doing about five points worse than he did last time around. If you extrapolated that across the whole country, he’d be down by one or two points right now in the popular vote – and since the key electoral college states were a little bit to the right of the country as a whole in 2020, that likely means that he’s down by a little bit more in those key states. So over the final four months of the campaign, he’s going to have to be coming from behind.
But as we’ve talked about repeatedly, the voters are there, who voted for him last time around, to let him come from behind. It’s just a question of whether those people are going to end up deciding that they can stomach the idea of voting for Biden, even though they don’t like him. If they do come around, he’s going to have a pretty decent chance. If they don’t, Trump’s going to win.
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