Is Trump Nostalgia Enough?

As a general rule, whenever people ask me about my thoughts on poll “x” or poll “y” my response is the same: Throw it in the poll average. Remember, not only are error margins real, but they’re intrinsic to sampling. An error margin of plus-or-minus three percent means that 95% of the time, the true population will be within three percentage points of the published “topline,” but that one time in twenty it won’t be. That’s not a pollster quality thing, that just comes with the territory of asking a fraction of the true population of interest.

Trump rates more favorably today

So the fact that CNN’s latest poll has Trump up six points isn’t that interesting to me, in and of-itself. It’s marginally interesting that this is happening in the midst of the one criminal trial that is likely to occur before Election Day, but it’s more interesting that his standing in the poll averages has held with the trial under way.

But what is interesting about this poll is what it tells us about the thought process of a lot of Trump voters. In the early years of the Obama administration, conservatives had a bit of a meme going where they posted a picture of George W. Bush waving with the caption, “Miss me yet?” The strange thing is that, with respect to Trump, the answer appears to be “yes” for a lot of people, at least when compared with Biden.

In retrospect, 55% of Americans consider Trump’s presidency a success, while 44% deem it a failure. By comparison, 39% consider Biden’s presidency a success, while 61% deem it a failure. To put things in perspective, that’s worse than Trump’s presidency was rated in mid-January, 2021, shortly after the attack on the Capitol building.

Even on personal favorability, which is thought to be a potential source of strength of Biden, he’s under water with a 35-58 split, while Trump is at 37-53.

The election might be approaching too fast for Biden

Will this continue? Obviously it’s hard to say, as polls are just snapshots in time. The problem is that the political science literature is pretty consistent that this is the time when the electorate’s views about the election start to harden, particularly with respect to the economy. That’s not good for Biden either: When asked how they would rate conditions in the economy today, 30% said “good,” while 70% said “poor.” That’s better than the 18-82 split from mid-2022, but it’s still worse than in the middle of the COVID shutdown, when it was a 34-65 breakdown. And it is far worse than the 70% “good” rating Trump received in late 2019.

We can repeat “It’s a long time until Election Day,” and that’s true in a sense. But Election Day is also fast approaching; we’re almost in May, and people start voting in September in some states.  If voters still have a favorable view of Trump’s presidency in a few months and think the incumbent president is a failure, the situation will quickly turn critical for Biden and the Democratic Party.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.