The post President Biden Might be in Better Shape Than You Think appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
]]>PPP conducted a poll for our friends at the Northwest Progressive Institute in Washington state last week and found Joe Biden up by 16 points, 54-38.
On the surface that may seem like a ‘who cares’ finding- no one is arguing Washington is going to be competitive this fall. The reason we think it’s noteworthy is that Biden’s lead was pretty close to his 19 point margin of victory in the state last time.
That speaks to a broader trend in our polling- while we, like everyone else, find President Biden in a weaker position than 2020 it’s only by a modest margin. We see a race that’s a sheer toss up, not one where the sky is falling and Donald Trump is a clear favorite.
Why listen to us? The run up to last week’s special election in NY CD 3 featured endless coverage of a ‘toss up’ race where no one knew what was going to happen. We did two polls in the final stretch of the campaign for major national organizations and found Tom Suozzi up by an average of 7.5 points, very similar to his final 8 point margin of victory. We were more bullish for Democrats than the public polls and pundits and we were right- if we are about Biden too, people shouldn’t be so quick to count him out.
Admittedly every now and then we conduct a poll where we do find Biden faring 6 or 7 points worse somewhere than he did in 2020.
What’s interesting when we dig in on those polls is that almost everyone who’s undecided voted for Biden last time around. In some cases it’s young people unhappy about the situation in the Middle East, in others it’s people who aren’t happy about Biden’s job performance but don’t like Donald Trump either and decided last time that they thought Biden was the better alternative. If the undecideds in those surveys voted for the same person they did in 2020, the status of the race in those places would look nearly identical to Biden-Trump round one.
There aren’t a ton of people who voted for Biden last time who are firmly for Trump this time- and that may give Biden more room to grow if he can get past supporters back in his column over the next eight months.
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]]>The post Trump, Robinson lead big with North Carolina Republicans appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
]]>PPP’s new North Carolina Republican poll finds Donald Trump and Mark Robinson with overwhelming leads in their respective races.
For President Trump gets 66% to 12% for Nikki Haley, 9% for Ron DeSantis, 4% for Vivek Ramaswamy, and 3% for Chris Christie.
For Governor Robinson gets 55% to 15% for Bill Graham and 7% for Dale Folwell.
One story the numbers for Governor tell is a tale of two endorsements. By a 33 point margin Republicans say they’re more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Donald Trump and you can see the benefits of having received that endorsement in Robinson’s strength.
The support of Thom Tillis is a very different story with the GOP faithful. Only 32% of primary voters have a favorable opinion of him to 38% with a negative one. And by a 12 point margin voters say they’re actually *less* likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by him. That helps to show why Tillis’ backing hasn’t done much to propel Bill Graham in the race for Governor.
Robinson isn’t just ahead based on name recognition. Voters who are familiar with him see him favorably by a 5:1 ratio, while Graham’s is just 1.5:1 and Folwell is actually slightly under water. Graham’s early ad spending doesn’t seem to be getting him much traction. If he is going to make a comeback it’s going to require going negative on Robinson and knocking down some of that reservoir of goodwill he has with the GOP base.
Only two of the Republican hopefuls for the White House are actually popular with primary voters- Trump with an 80/17 favorability rating and DeSantis at 56/28. Haley has moved into second place but has narrow appeal- her favorability is 38/44. Ramaswamy at 34/34 and Christie at 13/71 round out the field.
A look at the education breakdown provides an interesting prism into Trump’s control over this race. Trump’s strength with less well educated GOP voters is well known, and he leads Haley 81-2 among those with only a high school education. But he also leads Haley 40-28 among those with a post graduate education. So the perception that Haley is stronger with well educated and Trump stronger with less well educated voters is true only to a point- Trump has the upper hand with both groups to varying degrees.
It’s going to take a lot to knock Trump and Robinson off their perches over the next eight weeks.
PPP interviewed 619 likely Republican primary voters on January 5th and 6th with a margin of error of +/-3.9%. Full results here
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]]>The post Stein leads by more than 50 points in primary appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
]]>PPP’s first look at the Democratic race for Governor finds Josh Stein with a dominant lead. He gets 56% with all the rest of his opponents in single digits- Mike Morgan is at 5%, Marcus Williams at 4%, Chrelle Booker at 3%, and Gary Foxx gets 1%. Stein is broadly popular among the primary voters with an opinion about him, with 60% rating him favorably and just 4% unfavorably. By contrast Mike Morgan is mostly unknown- 82% of voters say they don’t know enough about him to have an opinion.
Stein has dominant leads in every segment of the Democratic electorate. Perhaps most notably he is at 49% with Black voters with none of his opponents getting more than 6% with them. His favorability with Black voters is 52/3.
There are clear early leaders in several of the other Democratic races:
-Rachel Hunt gets 23% for Lieutenant Governor to 6% for Mark Robinson and 5% for Ben Clark.
-Jeff Jackson gets 34% for Attorney General to 8% for Satana Deberry and 2% for Tim Dunn.
-Natasha Marcus gets 23% for Insurance Commissioner to 5% for David Wheeler.
Other races are relatively close with the vast majority of voters still in the undecided column:
-79% are undecided for Supreme Court. Allison Riggs leads Lora Cubbage 12-9.
-77% are undecided for State Treasurer. Wesley Harris leads Gabriel Esparza 14-9.
-77% are undecided for Superintendent of Public Instruction. Mo Green leads with 11% to 7% for Kenon Crumble and 5% for C.R. Katie Eddings.
North Carolina Democrats are very enthused about each of their two main leaders. Joe Biden has an 82/10 favorability rating and Roy Cooper is even more popular, coming in at 89/3. Any endorsements Cooper makes in the Democratic races should be well received- 64% say they’re more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by him with only 2% less likely to.
PPP interviewed 556 likely Democratic primary voters on December 15th and 16th. The margin of error is +/-4.2%. Full results here
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]]>The post Clarke, Trump dominate with Wisconsin Republicans appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
]]>When PPP took a first look in June at who Republicans in Wisconsin want to be on the top of their ticket next year the answer was Sheriff David Clarke for Senate and Donald Trump for President- now six months later GOP voters in the state are even more strongly in favor of that duo leading their ticket.
PPP’s newest Wisconsin Republican primary poll finds 52% want Sheriff Clarke to be their Senate nominee next year compared to 7% for Eric Hovde and 6% for Scott Mayer. In head to heads Clarke leads Hovde 51-10 and Mayer 52-6.
Clarke is the only potential GOP Senate hopeful with much of a public profile. He has 65% name recognition and 52% see him favorably to 13% with a negative opinion. Meanwhile Hovde has only 22% name recognition (11/11) and Mayer’s is 12% (5/7).
Just as he has nationally, Trump has strengthened his position in Wisconsin over the course of the last six months. He now has 54% support compared to 16% for Ron DeSantis, 15% for Nikki Haley, 5% for Chris Christie, and 4% for Vivek Ramaswamy.
That 38 point lead for Trump more than doubles his 16 point advantage from our June poll. Since then his support is up 13 points, DeSantis’ is down 9 points, and Haley’s is up by 10.
Feelings about Trump are pretty steady- a 69/21 favorability six months ago, 69/23 now. But perceptions of DeSantis have taken a sharp turn in the wrong direction with his one time +52 standing at 65/13 now diminished to +33 at 58/25.
Haley’s actually seen a decline in her net favorability too- it was 42/21 in June and it’s 42/35 now- but more of those voters who already liked her are picking her as their alternative to Trump than was the case earlier in the year. She doesn’t seem to actually be building a larger reservoir of GOP voters who like her though, which would could limit her ability to continue growing support.
PPP surveyed 503 likely Republican primary voters on December 11th and 12th. The margin of error is +/-4.4%. Full results here
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]]>The post Tuesday’s Results, How We Did, and Those New York Times Polls appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
]]>Tuesday’s election was a very good one for Democrats across the country and PPP was proud to play a role in a number of the key races across the country- and poll them pretty accurately!
-In Ohio voters established a constitutional right to abortion. We polled on this ballot question for three different clients in the last month of the campaign. Our final poll had it passing 55-38 and it passed 57-43 which makes sense because most undecideds move to ‘no’ on ballot questions.
-In Kentucky our incumbent Democratic Governor Andy Beshear got re-elected. We did work on this race over the course of the year both directly for the Governor’s campaign and for the Democratic Governors Association. Our publicly released poll on the contest had Beshear up 49-41 and we noted that most of the voters on the fence were Republicans and it would probably tighten up. He won by 5 points.
-Pennsylvania had an important State Supreme Court race. When we polled it for a client last month we found the Democratic candidate ahead by 8 points at 46-38 and it looks like his final margin of victory will be around 7 points.
There’s been a lot of attention to the New York Times polling last weekend. They have a great poll but the political world should never treat a single poll as the absolute gospel in the way it’s been doing this week.
As you can see above we’ve had a pretty good read on the world of late. And our most recent polls had Joe Biden up 4 in Michigan and Pennsylvania and 3 in Wisconsin, which would be enough to give him a majority in the Electoral College. Unreleased polling we’ve done in other key states recently has generally found a Biden-Trump rematch falling within a point or two of where it finished in 2020- at the end of the day there aren’t many minds to change on that choice!
It’s definitely going to be a close election, probably very similar to 2020 in its dynamics. But don’t let yourself despair that Trump is just going to clobber Biden, that’s not how we see the world and in most key races we’ve been seeing it pretty clearly…
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]]>The post Craig, Trump lead with Michigan GOP appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
]]>A new PPP poll of Michigan Republicans finds James Craig as the early front runner to be the party’s nominee for Senate next year. Meanwhile Donald Trump holds an overwhelming lead in the Presidential race.
Craig leads Mike Rogers by double digits, 30-19. Craig is both better known (43% name recognition to 33% for Rogers) and better liked (+21 net favorability compared to +3 for Rogers) than his opponent. Craig is up 13 points with self identified Republicans and 9 points with the independents who make up a decent share of the electorate in Michigan’s open primaries.
In the Presidential race Donald Trump gets 63% to 13% for Ron DeSantis with no one else in double digits. Nikki Haley is third at 6% and beyond her no one else gets more than 3%. Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy hit that mark with Doug Burgum and Mike Pence at 2%, and Tim Scott and Asa Hutchinson at less than 1%.
The educational divide among Republican voters is especially stark in Michigan. Trump gets 81% among voters with a high school education, but only 36% with those who have a postgraduate degree.
Trump continues to just get stronger. At this early stage James Craig is his most likely partner on the ticket.
PPP surveyed 430 likely Republican primary voters on October 9th and 10th with a margin of error of +/-4.7%. Full results here
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]]>The post Biden leads in key Midwestern states appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
]]>New PPP polls in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin- where wins for Joe Biden next year would be enough to get him to 270 electoral votes- find him leading Donald Trump by 3 or 4 points in each of them.
Biden is up 48-44 in both Michigan and Wisconsin, and 48-45 in Pennsylvania.
Most recent coverage of the race has focused on Biden’s struggles, and it’s true that he’s not terribly popular with favorability ratings of 42/51, 40/49, and 41/51 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin respectively.
But elections are a choice and not a referendum. And Biden is popular in these key swing states compared to his likely opponent of Donald Trump and his likely foil of Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans.
Trump’s net favorability rating is -23 in Michigan at 35/58, 14 points worse than Biden’s. It’s -20 at 35/55 in Wisconsin, 10 points worse than Biden’s. And it’s -16 at 38/54 in Pennsylvania, 7 points worse than Biden’s.
And as House Republicans move toward shutting down the government this weekend, Biden looks positively popular compared to their brand. In Michigan House Republicans have a 22/60 favorability spread and Kevin McCarthy has a 19/53 approval rating. In Pennsylvania House Republicans have a 22/57 favorability spread and Kevin McCarthy has a 20/54 approval rating. And in Wisconsin House Republicans have a 25/57 favorability spread and Kevin McCarthy has a 22/54 approval rating.
Democrats did very well in this key trio of states last year, winning Gubernatorial races by an average of 10 points in them and flipping legislative chambers in the two of the states that have fair district maps. It’s not surprising against that backdrop to see Biden with leads in them now that exceed his 2020 margins of victory.
We conducted these polls on behalf of our friends at Save My Country Action Fund. You can see their release here, as well as full results for Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that also cover a lot of issues related to democracy and the effort to impeach President Biden.
PPP also conducted a poll this week in New Jersey for our friends at Vote Vets, and we found that Robert Menendez has an 8% approval rating with 74% of voters disapproving of him, about the worst numbers we’ve ever seen for a politician.
One thing we found particularly notable is the extent to which Democrats have turned against Menendez after his indictment. Only 12% of voters even within his own party see Menendez positively while 68% give him negative marks. It’s a pretty stark contrast from the way Donald Trump’s popularity has actually *increased* with Republicans through one indictment after another.
Congressman Andy Kim would lead a generic Republican candidate for Senate next year by 12 points, 44-32, keeping the seat safely within Democratic hands. Meanwhile Menendez fares 34 points worse than Kim, trailing a generic Republican 42-20.
PPP’s been keeping busy of late with the 2023 elections almost here and the 2024 races not far behind. In the last couple weeks we’ve done polls for clients from the top of the ballot to the bottom of the ballot and also about key issues in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. If we can help you with anything whether it be elections, legislative policy battles, or where the public stands on key issues please send us an email or call us at 888-866-4950. We always love to help.
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]]>The post Newsletter: Democratic Successes Likely to Continue Through 2023 appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
]]>Last night Democrats pulled off a big win in Ohio, defeating a Republican ballot measure 57-43 in a campaign that was basically a litmus test on abortion rights, gerrymandering, and the general ability of voters to take matters into their own hands to rein in the extremism of the GOP legislature.
This was just the latest of a number of big wins for progressives throughout 2023 which also included taking control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and knocking Republicans out of two of the biggest Mayoral offices they still held in the country in Jacksonville and Colorado Springs.
In fact our friends at Daily Kos Elections have found that in more than 20 special elections across the country so far this year Democrats are doing an average of 7.5 points better than Joe Biden did in the same districts in his 2020 victory.
There are a few different reasons for this. One is obviously the salience of the abortion issue and the motivation voters have to send Republicans a message on it.
Another is the reshaping of the electorate along educational lines. The more well educated a voter is the more likely they are to turn out for in an election that is unusual- an April 2023 election for the state Supreme Court, an August 2023 election on a ballot question, etc. Because Democrats have increasingly become the party of well educated voters while Republicans have increasingly become the party of less well educated voters, Democrats have a structural turnout advantage in these ‘unusual elections’ that has contributed to their recent success in them.
As eyes turn to legislative elections in New Jersey and Virginia later this year a big question becomes ‘will Democrats have the same sort of turnout advantage in those regularly scheduled November elections that they’ve shown throughout the year?’ And the early answer from our polling from 10 races in those states is yes.
In our New Jersey and Virginia polling we’ve asked people if they’re certain to vote this fall, if they probably will, if the chances are 50/50, or if they will probably not vote and we’ve kept all respondents in the poll so we can see differences in voting intentions with the different groups.
So far an average of 73% of respondents in those districts say they’re ’certain to vote’ this fall. And among those who say they’re certain to vote, Democratic candidates are doing an average of 5 points better than they are in the polls overall- close to tracking with the average ‘over performance’ Democrats have had across the country so far this year.
Voters planning to cast their ballot for Democrats are more excited to turn out in New Jersey and Virginia this fall just like they have been all over the country so far this year. As long as our candidates have enough resources to run great campaigns that should lead to a more positive climate for legislative Democrats in those states than there was in 2021, putting more GOP held seats on the map and giving the party a good chance at reclaiming the House majority in Virginia while building on its majorities in the Virginia Senate and New Jersey legislature.
One thing we do caution on though is making many assumptions about what will happen in November 2024 based on what’s happened in 2023. When Donald Trump is on the ballot it’s a whole different ball game and it’s a safe bet that most of the less well educated conservative voters who’ve been sitting out elections this year will be back in the electorate. But Democrats can do a lot of good with continued successes in the races remaining in 2023.
We are staying busy with projects all over the country at PPP even in the off year! In the last few weeks we’ve polled Congressional races for next year in California, Delaware, Illinois, Nebraska, and New York, looked at what voters are thinking about current issues in Alabama, Michigan, and Minneapolis, and took a look at upcoming special elections in Oregon and South Carolina. If we can be of use to you for any upcoming projects please e-mail us at information@publicpolicypolling.com or call us at 888-621-6988. We would love to work with you!
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]]>The post Rosendale, Trump Lead GOP Field in Montana appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
]]>PPP’s newest poll finds that Montana Republicans strongly prefer Matt Rosendale and Donald Trump to be their candidates for Senate and President next year.
64% want Rosendale to be their Senate hopeful next year compared to just 10% for businessman Tim Sheehy. Rosendale is widely popular with GOP voters in the state, with 67% viewing him favorably and just 17% unfavorably.
Sheehy meanwhile has basically no profile at all. PPP has found over the years that if you test a number out of the phone book it will generally have about a 5% favorable, 13% unfavorable popularity split. At 10% favorable, 14% unfavorable Sheehy has only a nominally greater profile than a name out of the phone book. And his -4 net favorability rating is 54 points worse than Rosendale’s +50.
In the Presidential race Trump gets 46% to 23% for Ron DeSantis, 5% each for Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, 4% for Chris Christie, 3% for Vivek Ramaswamy, and 2% for Tim Scott.
Trump once again benefits from the crowded Republican field. In a head to head with DeSantis his lead declines from 23 points to 12 at 49-37. DeSantis picks up 14 points while Trump only picks up 3 in a two man race.
Mike Pence (27/47) and Chris Christie (12/53) are notably unpopular with Republican voters in the state.
Donald Trump led the GOP ticket in the state in 2016 and 2020, Matt Rosendale did in 2018. Montana Republicans overwhelmingly want to give them another go in 2024.
PPP surveyed 510 likely Republican primary voters on June 19th and 20th. The margin of error is +/-4.3%. Full results here
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]]>The post Rosendale, Trump lead GOP field in Montana appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
]]>The post Rosendale, Trump lead GOP field in Montana appeared first on Public Policy Polling.
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