Apr.16

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Polling News: A Republican, an Independent and a Democrat Walk into a Bar...

In addition to all the election news, there have been a few interesting political polls in the past few days. As chance would have it, there's one each for the three main political factions in the United States.

Starting with the Republicans, the number of U.S. voters who consider themselves to be part of the MAGA movement is on the rise. According to NBC News polling, in January of last year, 20% of Americans regarded themselves as members of the MAGA militia. By the time of the election last year, it was 29%. And now, it's 36%. The numbers make clear that this is driven almost entirely by Republicans, especially college-educated male Republicans, who were once Trump-skeptical, but have now developed an affinity for the President.

The second poll is from CBS News/YouGov. It covers a lot of things, but the interesting numbers are the ones coming from independent voters. With those folks, Trump is at 39% approve, 61% disapprove (and other recent polls have shown a similar breakdown). That is 22 points underwater. This is as badly as he's ever done with independent voters; during his first term he was usually between 10 and 15 points underwater with this segment of the electorate.

These are hardly shocking results. Trump has doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on his base-only strategy, since he no longer has to worry about getting reelected, and he only cares about legacy and fawning obeisance during Fox interviews and political rallies. Some folks kinda like what he's selling, and they clearly got more enthused the more aggressive Trump got. Everyone else is repelled.

Assuming these numbers are basically correct—and again, they are in line with other recent results—and assuming the trendlines hold (or grow even more extreme), then it presages a couple of phenomena we can expect to see this year and next, as the 2025 and 2026 elections unfold. First, non-MAGA Republicans who face MAGA challengers are going to have to veer right and are going to have to bow to Trump, or else risk defeat. To take but one example, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who knows a thing or two about judging which way the winds are blowing, posted this to his eX-Twitter feed recently:

To be honest, when we first saw the picture, we thought Cornyn was sitting on the toilet. Maybe because he's leaning on a marble counter and the shot is cut off at his waist. Or maybe because the paper used to print that book is really only good for one thing.

The second phenomenon is that, outside ultra-red states and districts, it's not easy to win elections when one-third of the electorate is extremely enthusiastic about the party in power, and the other two-thirds is disgusted. As we have noted many times, a wildly enthusiastic vote counts just once, the same as any other. Further deepening this dynamic, if the Republicans who survive the primaries are crazypants MAGA, or are non-MAGA who had to veer hard rightward, then in either case the GOP will be stuck with weaker candidates than would normally be the case.

Meanwhile, the final poll we shall mention here is the latest from Echelon Insights. They asked about a bunch of potential 2028 Democratic candidates for president, and got some interesting results. Here's the rundown of candidate support (each respondent could pick only one person to back):

A few observations:

• We are still very much in the "name recognition" part of the cycle, where responses skew heavily toward the "famous" candidates, because outside of political junkies and people who live in the same state as [PERSON X], most of these folks are unknowns. That said, there are a lot of candidates favored by Electoral-Vote.com readers on this list who clearly have some work to do if they're going to make a go of it.
  
  
• If Kamala Harris really believes she is doubling up her nearest competitor, and then some, that will make her gubernatorial decision (see above) a bit easier.
  
  
• Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is the biggest mover since the last iteration of this poll, picking up 9 points in the past month. Everyone knows how he did it, the real question is: Will it last? We think it's very probable that it will; his marathon speech is the kind of thing that lingers in memory.
  
  
• Those who follow sports media know that, on a near-daily basis, Stephen A. Smith expounds a lot of hot air about how he might just have to run for president, because he's the best candidate the Democrats have. This poll makes clear that is not the case. Smith should be at an advantage in a poll like this because he has national fame that most of the others do not. And yet, he's at a piddling 1%, trailing even his fellow media celebrity Jon Stewart.
  
  We don't think Smith is actually planning to run; figuring out what hot air will get him some attention each day is basically his job, and this so-called "presidential run" is manna from heaven for him. That said, we can think of another politician who was a professional blowhard, then toyed around with a presidential run as a means of getting some extra attention, and then caught fire. Smith is not likely to catch fire in the same way, but given his giant ego, we COULD see someone talking him into a run, and then backing that with their money, as a form of rat**cking. If Smith peeled off some number of young men, particularly young Black men, that could swing a primary (or even a state, if he launched an independent bid).

There are still many, many lifetimes until the 2025 elections, much less those in 2026 or 2028. Still, it's always interesting and useful to check in and see how the horse race is going. (Z)