Amy Walter: “According to the FiveThirtyEight model, Biden’s 9.6% lead in June has narrowed to an 8.3% lead in July. In trying to account for the change, we often dig into the cross tabs to see which demographic groups are responsible for this movement. Is it from seniors? Or those Obama-Trump voters? What about non-college white men?”
“In analyzing the last 18 months of polling from the Polling Consortium (which includes over 20,000 interviews), the AFL-CIO’s Mike Podhorzer has found that most of that movement can be attributed to a group he dubs ‘partisan bystanders.’ These are people who either hate both parties or don’t have strong feelings one way or the other about either party. Some of them aren’t paying all that much attention to politics. Some of them are more checked in on politics. But, they are not deeply invested in their partisan allegiances. Podhorzer estimates that about 15% of the electorate falls into the ‘bystander’ category.”
“In order for Trump to make a meaningful dent in Biden’s margin, he needs to make Biden an unacceptable alternative — or hope that Biden does that on his own through some sort of flub or misstep… But if this race stays on the same steady trajectory it’s been on for the last 18 months, Trump remains the decided underdog.”
