WaPo: The polls are inconclusive. Advantage Biden.
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Source: The Washington Post
July 17, 2024 at 2:08 p.m. EDT
Biden’s bad month hasn’t led to a dramatic drop in his numbers — or really much of a drop at all. President Biden and his supporters, in their push for him to remain the Democrats’ candidate, have been helped by a surprising source: the polls.
Saturday’s attempted shooting of former president Donald Trump has moved attention away from Biden’s struggles. But even before the shooting, only about two dozen of the 264 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in Congress had called for the president to step aside, despite serious private doubts in the party about Biden’s ability to win in November. The lack of a groundswell against Biden is in part because the president really wants to run and many in the party aren’t willing to sideline him against his will.
But another reason Biden can’t be dislodged easily is polling. If the president had no path to victory and another Democrat had a clear one, I suspect there would be much more momentum behind the calls for him to leave the race. But neither of those conditions exist. The president is just barely behind Trump in Michigan (3 percentage points) and Pennsylvania (less than 1 point) and effectively tied in Wisconsin, according to polling averages from The Post. (Other news organizations have slightly different averages, but they generally show very tight margins in those three states.)
Biden’s dismal debate performance and the intense criticism it drew from the media and even other Democrats didn’t result in a dramatic drop in his numbers — or really much of a drop at all. Biden was getting around 41 percent of the national popular vote (including third-party candidates) before the June 27 debate and is at 40 percent now, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/17/inconclusive-polls-help-biden/
Michigan (3 percentage points) and Pennsylvania (less than 1 point) and effectively tied in Wisconsin."
I guess they ran out of lies?
= new reply since forum marked as read
I guess Biden will now have to go
✌🏻
I mean, er, it's up to Joe and I'm waiting for him to make a decision. 
I don’t want to overstate my case here. The panic about Biden among Democrats is driven by polling, which suggests that if the election were today he would lose to Trump and potentially in a landslide. He could drag the entire party down to his level, giving Republicans total control in Washington next year.
Worries about Biden’s effects downballot are reportedly the concerns of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who on Wednesday called for Biden to leave the race, becoming perhaps the most high-profile member of Congress to do so.
But over the past three weeks, a series of polls showing Biden down double-digits in swing states or Whitmer substantially ahead in all of them would have doomed the president. Those polls never showed up. The president has long been publicly dismissive of polling. He might want to rethink that view. The polls allowed a man who performed worse in a general election debate than any other candidate in memory to remain in the race.
Makes 100% sense to me.
