I don’t think Hillary, on her own, CHOSE to ignore Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016. Somebody told her campaign “Yeah, those are safe, you don’t need to go there…” and that was one of the factors that tanked her campaign.
Joe cannot win without them. He needs to campaign HARD there.
Latest polling in Michigan shows it at a virtual tie, 43% to 43%.
Primary data shows more energy on the Republican side:
Now, you can argue more people came out on the Republican side because they were motivated by having a choice, but just over a million Republican votes to just over 600K Democratic votes needs to be a giant fucking wake up call.
Same deal for Wisconsin, polls showing Trump +2, +3, +4:
I, a Michigander, voted against Trump in the primary and will be voting against him again in the general. And I know I wasn’t alone, which accounts for some of the total Republican ballots. Open primaries mean that can happen.
Against an incumbent trump when people believed Biden’s campaign promises…
This time being the incumbent hurts Biden. 4 years ago if someone said Biden would be supporting a genocide, trying to codify Trump’s border policies, and calling migrants “illegals” I’d have laughed in their face.
Biden is less popular now then when all most voters knew about him was he was Obama’s VP.
Dude took 36 years to win his first presidential primary, he wasn’t that popular to begin with.
The “incumbent advantage” is often misunderstood. Because a weak incumbent gets primaried.
So the DNC says primarying a candidate hurts them, and why NH didn’t get delegates this year.
The reality is only weak incumbents get primaried. Whether they get challenged or not in the primary doesn’t make them weaker or stronger.
By taking a primary away, we’re not helping a candidate, we’re throwing away the option to run a more popular candidate. Which hurts the party and every American if it means trump is elected.
It’s like saying the only reason trump got caught on his tax fraud was he ran for president. Running for president brought attention to it, but he cheated on taxes decades before running and could have been prosecuted at any time.
An actual primary wouldn’t have made Biden unpopular, it would have just made how unpopular he is more public, while giving him a public stage to move left to his voters and win some over for the general.
Hiding it doesn’t make it better, it just gives people a false sense of security, which ironically often leads to lower turnout.
Hes more popular for me. I still can’t believe how much he has done in one term with an adversarial congress that improves my quality of life. and yeah I feel sad about international affairs but I vote on internal affairs. especiallly when its so obvious how much worse the alternative is internationally.
I hope it’s enough, and I do feel a lot more comfortable now then a week ago. We just need Biden to stop reaching out to Haley voters and start trying to get liberal votes on his side.
It’s just insane to me that less than two thirds of the country hold a favorable opinion of either candidate. No matter what happens, the majority of the country will be unhappy with it.
That means depressed turnout, and those are the only elections republicans have a chance at winning. I’d rather not give them that chance
Why? They’ve done it once already.
And then there’s 2016…
I don’t think Hillary, on her own, CHOSE to ignore Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016. Somebody told her campaign “Yeah, those are safe, you don’t need to go there…” and that was one of the factors that tanked her campaign.
Joe cannot win without them. He needs to campaign HARD there.
Latest polling in Michigan shows it at a virtual tie, 43% to 43%.
Primary data shows more energy on the Republican side:
Donald Trump - 68.1% - 759,122 votes
Nikki Haley - 26.6% - 296,431 votes
Uncommitted - 3% - 33,561 votes
Joe Biden - 81.1% - 623,642 votes
Uncommitted - 13.2% - 101,457 votes
Now, you can argue more people came out on the Republican side because they were motivated by having a choice, but just over a million Republican votes to just over 600K Democratic votes needs to be a giant fucking wake up call.
Same deal for Wisconsin, polls showing Trump +2, +3, +4:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/wisconsin/
Their primary is on 2/20. It will be interesting to see how the vote goes as Haley is officially out.
I, a Michigander, voted against Trump in the primary and will be voting against him again in the general. And I know I wasn’t alone, which accounts for some of the total Republican ballots. Open primaries mean that can happen.
Against an incumbent trump when people believed Biden’s campaign promises…
This time being the incumbent hurts Biden. 4 years ago if someone said Biden would be supporting a genocide, trying to codify Trump’s border policies, and calling migrants “illegals” I’d have laughed in their face.
Biden is less popular now then when all most voters knew about him was he was Obama’s VP.
Dude took 36 years to win his first presidential primary, he wasn’t that popular to begin with.
Historically incumbent presidents always have the upper hand.
The “incumbent advantage” is often misunderstood. Because a weak incumbent gets primaried.
So the DNC says primarying a candidate hurts them, and why NH didn’t get delegates this year.
The reality is only weak incumbents get primaried. Whether they get challenged or not in the primary doesn’t make them weaker or stronger.
By taking a primary away, we’re not helping a candidate, we’re throwing away the option to run a more popular candidate. Which hurts the party and every American if it means trump is elected.
It’s like saying the only reason trump got caught on his tax fraud was he ran for president. Running for president brought attention to it, but he cheated on taxes decades before running and could have been prosecuted at any time.
An actual primary wouldn’t have made Biden unpopular, it would have just made how unpopular he is more public, while giving him a public stage to move left to his voters and win some over for the general.
Hiding it doesn’t make it better, it just gives people a false sense of security, which ironically often leads to lower turnout.
And as always:
Low turnout is how republicans become presidents
Hes more popular for me. I still can’t believe how much he has done in one term with an adversarial congress that improves my quality of life. and yeah I feel sad about international affairs but I vote on internal affairs. especiallly when its so obvious how much worse the alternative is internationally.
Well, less then a third of Americans hold a favorable opinion of Biden like you do…
Just slightly better than trumps numbers.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-unpopular-polls-2024-election-1877870
I hope it’s enough, and I do feel a lot more comfortable now then a week ago. We just need Biden to stop reaching out to Haley voters and start trying to get liberal votes on his side.
It’s just insane to me that less than two thirds of the country hold a favorable opinion of either candidate. No matter what happens, the majority of the country will be unhappy with it.
That means depressed turnout, and those are the only elections republicans have a chance at winning. I’d rather not give them that chance
So incumbency helped trump and hurts Biden. Okay.
Did trump win as an incumbent?
No, because he was incredibly unpopular.
Both Biden and trump are currently sitting just under 1/3 favorably.
Being an unpopular incumbent hurt trump in 2020, and it will hurt Biden in 2024.