Donald Trump appears close to invincible in the early Republican primaries and caucuses, but his strength among general election voters remains unclear.
Biden won because of the youth vote, millennials and gen z out numbered boomers and silent generation for the first time.
But this year he's only up 4 points in the 18-34 demo.
It's fucking insane seeing so many people insisting we can't talk about these issues while there's still time to fix it.
Biden just doesn't want to actually do things that would get him votes. Even something basic like doing interviews, it's like the 2024 Biden campaign is just going to be hiding him in a closet while the media talks about how bad trump would be and all of Bidens aides claim he's a completely different person off camera
I really don't think it will be enough this time. And it's fucking terrifying
Just a note that polling of Millenials and younger is known to be wildly inaccurate since we don't follow traditional news media, so extrapolating a sample to a state or national value is functionally guesswork.
This is why polling stated Obama wasn't going to be re-elected and everyone was expecting a big Romney win.
The same youths who helped him win in 2020 will be needed this year. And I'm not 100% sure that a senile moderate is enticing enough to bring out the required votes, even if the other guy is a senile fascist-wannabe.
The game isn't to be the best person to fix America. The game is not fucking up.
They tell people what they think online and on tv, you don't need a debate. The only thing that can happen to old men like Trump and Biden on a debate stage is them fucking up.
A massive win on stage wouldnt change their base or sway people more than pundits hammering your point eloquently for you, but a fuck up would end them, so they don't go.
Keep in mind that it's still February. The election is in November. If he did all of that now, the energy it generates would be worn off by then. Hopefully the strategy is to gear up the campaign in summer.
I have to let this out, and your comment was the trigger. Lucky you.
Three things are pissing me off in this election in particular.
Undecideds. There's supposed to be this huge center (well, 30%) of unaffiliated "undecided" voters. Who TF are these people, who look at the modern Republican party and at Trump, and go: "hmmm. I just don't know. Do I vote for the bland old guy, or the fascist, philandering, traitorous tax-avoiding old guy who's under inditement in several states? I just don't know!"
Primaries. Lots of liberals - myself included - are furious with Biden about his support of Israel in this ethnic cleansing. The primaries should be the place where we can express our displeasure, and is almost the only forum we have to exert (generally) direct electoral pressure. But we can't, because doing so harms Biden's chances in the general election by sowing discord - c.f. the very relevant Bernie Bros, who refused to vote for Hillary even after Bernie threw in with her.
Biden's cabinet. Whoever is in charge of his PR is doing a shit job. I learn more on Lemmy about Biden's accomplishments than I do in the general news. Biden's doing a good job in many areas, but Joe Public doesn't know because Biden's PR staff have their heads up their asses.
It's utterly insane; the electoral college needs to be dumped, there's no doubt about that, and adoption of approval voting, or ranked choice -- almost anything would be better. But even with these issues, the US managed to work for 200 years, until the past few election cycles, and it's just gotten insane.
The problem is, I don't believe they are all sock puppets. It would be foolish to think that people on the left aren't as susceptible to disinfo as people on the right. Plus the complaints are totally valid. Biden is too old, he is supporting Israel's genocide, he is just barely a centrist, and he will just enable the status quo instead of affecting real positive change in the country. What's at stake is much more dire. I'm willing to wait another 4 years to try again for a more progressive candidate rather than gamble now on a less than 1% chance of a slightly better candidate and a 99% chance of trump and the likely end of free and fair elections.
All true. In the US, you don't have to win a majority to win the election.
But I highly doubt that Democrats are going to sit this one out.
And if they just show up to the same degree as in 2020, Trump still needs to broaden support in the key swing states to actually win them. If he's not doing it nationally, chances are he's not doing it in the battlegrounds.
Depends if the Democratic leadership decides to go for we can totally flip Texas for reals this time AGAIN. Ignoring all of the increasingly purple formerly hard blue states in the rust belt.
It's also February. November is coming but alot can change and people can decide to vote after summer. Most people think it's a decision that can be made later.
Most of those votes weren't for Biden though they were against trump. Trump is still trump last I checked so I will vote against him again and hope for the best
Considering current polling, his current level of support is terrifyingly close to enough. If we don't want to face down four more years of Trump, Biden really needs a lot better campaigning than, "I'm not that guy." Sure, it's still early and the predictive power of polls at this stage isn't fantastic. But, it seems like a bad place to be starting from.
Every single day Biden continues to support genocide, the closer I get to not being able to vote for him. Among my friends, I'm the most harm reductionist telling people that when election day comes, we have to do what's best with the choice we have. But I'm starting to become viscerally disgusted at the idea of voting for Biden
And by not voting for Biden, how do you expect the issue you care about is going to be addressed by a Trump administration? I’m in my 50s and have never been a fan of Joe Biden or most of the “centrist” Democratic Party - but you can sure as hell believe I’ll be casting a vote for him in November.
Trump will fucking nuke Gaza if given the chance. He also wants domestic concentration camps. Don't you think for a second there is any comparison between the two. Trump is a monster.
This is like saying you're not going to vote for Biden because he's white. Or old. Or a capitalist. So is the other guy. There isn't another viable option. Trump has just as bad, if not a worse stance on Palestine, even provoking further conflict by moving the embassy during his tenure. You can't expect any US president to go to war with one of our only two legitimate allies in the region, but Biden's at least trying to broker a ceasefire for hostages.
We can only hope the people who said they wouldn't vote for him, due to having various final judgments against him, will have the conviction to hold to that claim.
That is how basically every election has worked for 30+ years. About 40% of people lean republican, 40% democrat, and 20% independent. Campaigns are mostly about getting 100% of your 40% to vote than winning independents or opponents.
Way less people are Republican, but only in pure numbers, which doesn't mean shit when you use the Electoral College (or have 2 senators per state regardless of population, for that matter). The only voters who actually matter for presidents are in the 5 or so states that don't always go red or blue.
We already hit the point decades ago where GOP can't win a federal election without anti democratic institutions like gerrymandering and the electoral college. It needs to be replaced with something actually functional in leading government in policy supporting constituents to compete with DNC. I detest political parties, but the only thing worse than many parties is one party.
We're in an era of populism and people are still trying to use the 2000s era to predict today.
He doesn't need to wide. his base, he just needs to motivate them. He need to to get more people excited about voting for him than Biden does those excited to vote Biden.
It's about turnout and driving a base. He's wiping the floor with Biden right now in the polls. No one is excited to vote Biden. It's not clear to me he even has a base. Instead taking heads are just trying to browbeat any one left of center into supporting Biden. It won't work at scale. Bidens got to do his own work there, because it's not currently Trump in office, it's Biden. Always harder for an incumbent, especially one who has become deeply unpopular with the coalition of voters that out him into office. No amount of blue no matter who is going to fix Biden as a candidate. Only Biden can do that.
It's just what excites voters pisses off big money donors. And they picked the side neoliberals are always going to pick.
And they're hoping the threat of trump is enough to scare the serfs into line.
From a psychology perspective, it's a horrible plan. Especially after it has a 50% success rate in the last two elections. 2024 is a coin flip, and it's only because we're using trump as an excuse to run someone who's first presidential primary was 2 generations ago.
Seriously. A person born the year of Bidens first primary could safely be a grandparent for this one. In some red states, a great grandparent already.
He's never been a popular candidate, just had the luck of getting the primary handed to him and getting to face the literal worst president we've ever had the general.
Mean while, blue no matter who out here downvoting like this isn't the case.
Blue no matter who has proven to be a failed strategy in that it leaves you with weak indefensible candidates in competitive elections.
Were probably going to get Trump, and it will be 💯 due to Democrats and the Blue No Matter Who coalition. But just like Hillarys shocking arrogance in 2016, these ass holes will yet again fail to understand that they themselves are the problem.
CRAZY RIGHT. But seriously, three people that I personally know voted for Biden in 2020, now are thinking about not voting? That's a lot. It's also who these people are that gets me, they are your run of the mill city democrats. Not terminally online Twitter followers eating antibiden propaganda.
Honestly, as the way things are, it doesn’t matter, we’re still doomed. Even if the asshole karks it from one too many hamburgers tomorrow, still doomed.
I doubt it, the moron killed his own demos with his own policy in 2020. Democrats have over performed every special election since then. Biden now has incumbency as well. It’ll be tighter than it should be, but I bet trump does does worse than he did in 2020
I mean, maybe. But the impact on R votes was fairly small when considering the electoral college, and while Biden has the incumbency he also has a genocide being performed by an "ally" we don't seem willing to stop selling arms to, and he can't seem to find any but the mildest language to begrudgingly indicate that maybe this might not be 100% exactly precisely something he can really support on the part of Israel - not that he's prepared to take any action mind you, but just if anyone is listening he wants people to know this doesn't fill him with joy.
I'm gonna vote for Biden. But he's not doing himself any favors, and the fact that I'd die rather than vote for Trump, and Republicans on the whole are dead to me now, are the reasons he's getting my vote. Not enthusiasm for Biden or because he's the incumbent. Police reform? Forgotten. MJ rescheduling? Token platitudes. Student Loans? Glad he did something, but happier if he did more. Probably not going to offset the "young people angry about Gaza" contingent. Etc.
In 2022 Israel wasn't razing Gaza one hospital at a time while we stood by without so much as wringing our hands. That's gonna change the votes of some folks. The only question is how many.
It also highlights a Republican party that has made an about-face on central policy issues, favoring some big government programs and retreating from commitments abroad.
That's a strange take on history. Of course many Republican politicains have said "focus on the homeland" or whatever while voting for wars, so the stated positions aren't really changing, and I don't imagine that Trump would be anti-war anyway. And big government is also a Republican thing. I can point to specific examples, but we all know about them, so why bother?
Anyway, it's hard for politics writers, no doubt, but this is basic historical knowledge. They can do better.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump appears close to invincible in the Republican primaries and caucuses, but despite his commanding victories, the front-runner’s strength among general election voters remains unclear.
It also highlights a Republican party that has made an about-face on central policy issues, favoring some big government programs and retreating from commitments abroad.
So far, almost all of Trump’s backing has come from white voters, who made up the vast majority of the electorate in the first few head-to-head Republican contests — even in diverse South Carolina.
Trump also maintained high levels of support with evangelical Christians and people living in small towns and rural areas, groups that have significant weight within Republican primaries but comprise a smaller share of the general electorate.
Instead, Republican primary voters strongly support domestic policies that require significant government investment, like maintaining the current age of 67 for Social Security eligibility and building a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
In the lead-up to the primaries, Republican candidates clashed over these issues, testing whether long-held GOP positions like shrinking the size of entitlement programs and taking a strong hand in foreign conflicts still resonate with the party’s base.
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The danger has never been trump gaining voters, it's that Biden is so shit and ignoring the majority of Dem voters that it might depress turnout so much Trump's base could be enough like it was in 2016.
People only turn up to vote against something... that's the real problem Biden has. Th old say 'you run using poetry, you govern using prose', is apt. Ironically it'll be the anger over Gaza, that will keep the Democratic base home, and if Trump wins he'll claim half of Gaza for himself.