Donald Trump would be on track to win a historic landslide in November — if so many US voters didn’t find him personally repugnant.

Roughly 53 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the former president. And yet, when asked about Trump’s ability to handle key issues — or the impact of his policies — voters routinely give the Republican candidate higher marks than President Biden.

In a YouGov survey released this month, Trump boasted an advantage over Biden on 10 of the 15 issues polled. On the three issues that voters routinely name as top priorities — the economy, immigration, and inflation — respondents said that Trump would do a better job by double-digit margins.

Meanwhile, in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 40 percent of voters said that Trump’s policies had helped them personally, while just 18 percent said the same of Biden. If Americans could elect a normal human being with Trump’s reputation for being “tough” on immigration and good at economics, they would almost certainly do so.

Biden is fortunate that voters do not have that option. But to erase Trump’s small but stubborn lead in the polls, the president needs to erode his GOP rival’s advantage on the issues.

  • mwguy@infosec.pub
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    Did you read that article? Their first example of a polling “miss”:

    The average poll in the week before election day had Mehmet Oz beating John Fetterman by nearly 1% in Pennsylvania when in reality Fetterman beat Oz by nearly 5%

    Pollsters were actually calling that race a toss up (also 538’s page. There were several polls that predicted a slim Oz and several that predicted a slim Fetterman. Even the Republican leading pollster that was predicting a 1% the wrong way has a confidence interval of +/- 2.5 and had 4.9% other/undecided factor in the poll.

    People are angry that they can’t read polls. They’re angry that a toss up is just that.

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Did you read it? It goes on to describe larger polling errors(14%) that resulted consistently in multiple elections going the opposite way of the polls.

      Polls are consistently inaccurate.

      You can read the whole article instead of the first sentence.