The significance of the “enthusiasm gap” is exaggerated. https://t.co/ePX7eFyk1C— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) July 15, 2020
First, while Biden voters may not be all that excited about voting for Biden, they’re very enthusiastic about voting against Trump. And that gives Biden a pretty strong edge, because Trump supporters don’t despise Biden the way they despised Hillary Clinton in 2016. In fact, according to survey data from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape project, the share of Trump voters who rate Biden unfavorably is consistently much lower than the share of Biden voters who rate Trump negatively — nearly 30 percentage points lower as of the last survey conducted at the end of June.
Second, because Trump voters don’t dislike Biden as much as Biden voters dislike Trump, Biden actually has an advantage in net enthusiasm (calculated as the difference between a candidate’s “very favorable” and “very unfavorable” rating). The gap on this metric has widened between the two in the past month, too.
What’s especially notable here is that Biden’s net enthusiasm rating is near zero, which is similar to most major-party presidential candidates’ ratings from 1980 to 2012. Trump’s current score of around -20, on the other hand, has only one historical comparison other than his own campaign four years ago: Hillary Clinton in 2016.
People didn't vote for Trump so much as they voted against Clinton. Which works to Biden's advantage now.
I don't think Republicans have ever grappled with the reality that Trump got a smaller percentage of the popular vote than Romney did, even though Romney was running against one of the most popular presidential candidates ever and Trump was running against one of the least.— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) July 14, 2020
I don't think political pundits have grappled with that, either.
No comments:
Post a Comment