Trump trails Democrats by a historically large margin (CNN's Harry Enten)

[highplainsdem]

Tweet from CNN's Enten:

Link to tweet

Still long ways to go, but Trump is polling worse against his potential Dem challengers than any prez incumbent was against eventual general election opponent @ this pt in campaign since at least WWII. https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/31/politics/trump-democrat-matchups-analysis/index.html …

From the article:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/31/politics/trump-democrat-matchups-analysis/index.html

What's the point: The Quinnipiac poll was the second probability poll that meets CNN standards and was conducted in August which found Trump down by at least 5 points against all his most likely challengers. In both the Fox News poll out earlier this month and Quinnipiac's latest, he trailed his most likely challenger, Biden, by double-digits. In fact, in an average of all the August polls (those that meet CNN standards and not), Biden was up by a 49% to 39% margin.

We're still over a year away from the 2020 general election, so don't take these polls to the bank.

Still, it's worth pointing out the historically bad position Trump is in. No incumbent president has ever polled this poorly against his likely challengers at this point in the campaign.

I went all the way back to World War II era in the Roper Center archive to see how presidents were polling at this point against their eventual challengers. I selected the worst poll for the incumbent if there was more than one poll taken in order to give Trump the most generous comparison. In years in which no polls were taken in August the year before the election (i.e. when the last poll for 2020 was conducted), I chose the poll taken closest to this point.

What's clear is the vast majority of incumbents were ahead at this point in the campaign: nine of the 11 were ahead. And for the average incumbent, they led their eventual challenger by 12 points at this point.

Again, Trump trails Biden by 10 points in the average August poll. Trump has not been ahead of Biden in a single national poll taken this entire cycle.

[peggysue2]

1. This!

This is the analysis I mentioned in another thread. Enten tracked the numbers back to WWII and Trump's numbers are unbelievably dismal, as in record-breaking bad. Yet we don't hear the level of screech (except from Trump) that I'm sure we would if the numbers were this bad for the Democrats. Which makes me wonder what the internal polling looks like (probably far worse). It puts all these GOP retirements and decisions 'to spend more time with the family' rather than run for reelection in a different light.

Not to get complacent but this makes me feel optimistic for the future.

Thanks for finding this, highplainsdem.

[Dan]

2. Sadly,

People lie.