Democrats Will Vote Democratic

Philip Bump: “Looking at the gap between presidential net approval (that is, approval of the president minus disapproval) and how the president’s party is faring in the generic ballot, we see that the gap between Biden and his party is far higher than at any prior point in the last 200 days of the past five federal election cycles.”

“A central reason for that is that Democrats are more likely to say they plan to vote for Democrats in November than they are to say they approve of Biden. Polling from YouGov shows that in 2018 and 2020, the gap in Republican approval for Donald Trump was on average about 2.5 to three points away from Republican support for Republicans on the generic ballot. YouGov had a methodological error in polls this summer that means there’s no generic-ballot data, but the past two polls have shown an average gap of around 12 points between Democratic support for Democrats and Democratic approval of Biden.”

Earlier for members: Why This Election Is Tougher to Predict