OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Some of Democrats’ favorite cable news networks are in a panic over the popularity of former President Donald Trump.
As poll after poll shows the former president ahead of President Joe Biden, the reality that the geriatric commander-in-chief is historically unpopular is starting to set in for many of them.
“So, let’s go ahead and we’re going to look at the race to 270, right, because at the end of the day, it’s all about delegates,” CNN analyst Harry Enten said.
“Here’s the 2020 map, right? Joe Biden won with 306 electoral votes. Donald Trump got 232. But look at where our projections are right now, our race ratings right now, what do we see? We see something completely different. We see Donald Trump at 272, Joe Biden at just 225. So, if the election were held today, which it obviously isn’t, we have months and months to go, Donald Trump would be a heavy favorite. And he is flipping states at this particular point, and we would expect that, like Georgia, that Joe Biden won, Nevada, that Joe Biden won, Arizona state, Joe Biden won, toss-up. Same in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest. Same with Pennsylvania. And Michigan, where we obviously held that primary last week, at this particular point leaning Republican,” the analyst said.
“So, folks, if you have it in your mind that Donald Trump is just popular enough to win the Republican nomination, lose that thought because at this particular point when matched up against Joe Biden, Donald Trump is a favorite, which is something we couldn’t say at any point in 2020 and really wasn’t something that we could say at any point in 2016 when he was matched up against Hillary Clinton,” he said.
CNN: “Folks, If you have it in your mind that Donald Trump is just popular enough to win the Republican nomination, lose that thought because at this particular point, when matched up against Joe Biden, Donald Trump is the favorite…” pic.twitter.com/eKj3O5xJkv
— MAGA War Room (@MAGAIncWarRoom) March 6, 2024
MSNBC reporter Steve Kornacki was more apoplectic with his analysis of what is going on with voters.
“If you’re looking at the primaries and saying there’s all this evidence of Republicans turning on Trump in the fall, you’re not seeing it in the general election polling,” he said.
“The reason Trump is leading in these polls right now…they’re picking off Biden voters right now more than Biden is picking off Trump voters,” he said.
MSNBC: Polling shows President Trump is “picking off Biden voters” — not the other way around pic.twitter.com/Qwx0zKm4YA
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 6, 2024
He spoke about a recent poll that showed 97 percent of people who said they voted for Trump in 2020 were still with him whereas the number was only 85 percent for President Biden.
While it’s too soon to tell what effect President Joe Biden’s angry, screechy State of the Union address actually had on his reelection chances, a series of new national polls show him falling farther behind his likely GOP rival, Donald Trump.
The polling is from late February, several major outlets had Trump sailing past Biden, often outside the polls’ margins of error.
The Wall Street Journal noted:
In the latest Wall Street Journal poll ahead of the State of the Union address, Republican Donald Trump holds a narrow lead over Democrat President Biden in a head-to-head test of the expected 2024 presidential matchup, with 47% backing Trump and 45% picking Biden, a difference within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. In December, Trump led by four points.
CBS News added:
As Super Tuesday makes an historic rematch all but official, voters are comparing not just two presidents, but two presidencies.
And right now former President Donald Trump emerges from that comparison as the frontrunner. He leads President Biden by four points nationally, his largest lead to date. Here’s why:
Voters recall the economy under Trump more fondly than they rate the economy now.
