Biden-Trump rematch 2024: NAJ screen shot

By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The worm is beginning to turn, and not in Trump’s favor.

For the past six months, news outfits have pushed out story after story claiming former President Donald Trump was ahead of President Joe Biden in the polls in the presidential election of 2024, keeping Trump supporters feeling in the right and Democrats on edge.

But as I pointed out recently, those polls are not very meaningful because it is too soon to accurately gauge where people will be in their political opinions in October and November, and besides, most of the surveys of registered voters have actually shown the race within the margin of error, which is actually “too close to call.”

Presidential Election 2024: Biden, Trump Rematch Too Close to Call

I also predicted several months ago that the picture would look much different by summer, and we are almost there. Previous surveys have also shown that anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of previous Trump voters would walk away from supporting Trump if he was convicted of a felony.

As everyone knows by now, a New York jury convicted Trump last week of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal in what became known sensationally as the Stormy Daniels Hush Money Trial.

Trump Found Guilty on All 34 Counts in New York Hush Money Trial

I’ve been waiting for the first poll results to come out since the verdict to see if it would show evidence of a move on the part of some voters away from Trump. The New York Times finally provided a followup and are now showing at least some evidence that the verdict is making a difference in the minds of some voters.

Small Shift Toward Biden After Trump Verdict

“It’s one of the big questions in the wake of the conviction of Donald J. Trump,” says Nate Cohn. “Did the verdict change anyone’s mind?”

To find out, the Times-Siena College survey team called back people who had taken a survey in the last few months to see if they could find evidence on whether anyone’s preferences are changing.

“The early answer seems to be an equivocal ‘yes,’” Cohn says.

The Times reach out to about 1,900 people who favored Trump when originally interviewed in April and May, showing they favored Trump by three points. Those respondents this time only backed Trump by one point, indicating a two point drop already.

“A two-point shift toward President Biden may not seem like much, but in such a close election it could easily be decisive,” Cohn says. “In fact, he is within two points in national polls and in states and districts worth 270 electoral votes, so a two-point shift in his favor would more or less erase Mr. Trump’s overall lead in the polls.”

The swing voters identified were young, nonwhite, less engaged and low-turnout voters.

The results show that 20 percent of Trump’s previous supporters who are Black now say they back Biden. In comparison, only 2 percent of non-Black previous Trump supporters made the flip.

“With that in mind, it’s possible Mr. Biden gained a bit more than the two-point improvement among those we successfully recontacted,” Cohn says. “That’s because older, white and highly engaged voters were relatively likely to retake the survey, and those groups were much less likely to swing in the aftermath of the verdict.”

But the bottom line is, if you’ve wondered whether anything can change people’s minds in a rematch in a polarized country, according to Cohn, “I think this study offers a pretty clear answer.”

It’s still too early to say for sure, but the worm appears to be turning, and not in Trump’s favor.

___
Glynn Wilson is an expert on public opinion as an academic researcher and a journalist. He minored in Political Science with a major in Journalism and Communications at the University of Alabama in an undergraduate BA program back in the early 1980s, where he took every class offered related to this specialty. He also spent some time working with the Capstone Poll in those days, run by Political Science Professor Pat Cotter, and journalism professor Jim Stovall. He covered public opinion for newspapers after that for 10 years as part of the beat of covering public affairs and politics, including elections. He then went back to grad school at UA in the mid-1990s. One of his graduate research jobs was to oversee the public opinion lab in the College of Communications, also under the leadership of Stovall and Cotter, who conducted most of the political election polls in Alabama for a couple of decades. Wilson’s academic research specialty was in the area of media effects on public opinion. He later worked toward a Ph.D. in this research, but rather than continue teaching and jump through the final hoop of defending a dissertation at the University of Tennessee, he opted to go back into the news business working for The Dallas Morning News, The New York Times and other publications. He went independent on the web in 2005, and has covered public opinion ever since as one of his many specialty beats.

___

If you support truth in reporting with no paywall, and fearless writing with no popup ads or sponsored content, consider making a contribution today with GoFundMe or Patreon or PayPal.