We have to live with the reality of the Electoral College. While our top tier candidates are leading in national polls, we can ask Hillary Clinton how much that helped her. We know that two polls showed that a majority of Americans support the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump. However, those surveys were of Americans, not registered voters. Moreover, we should view them as we do national polls. Here is the reality that we must face :
Just as we hung up the phone, a tweet arrived, delivering the results of a New York Times/Siena College poll of six swing states, showing that the Democrat with the best chance to defeat President Donald Trump is currently…Joe Biden. Sure, there are big differences between anecdote and the quasi-science of polling. But the coincidence of timing neatly captured the strangeness of Biden’s standing, slightly less than one year from the general election.
and
Despite poor showings against his Democratic rivals in national polls, President Donald Trump appears deadlocked with his potential opponents in a handful of pivotal states about a year before the 2020 presidential election, according to new surveys.
In hypothetical races in six states that could decide whether the president wins another term in the White House — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina — Trump mostly trails former Vice President Joe Biden, but fares better against Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, according to New York Times/Siena polls. The surveys signal those states could swing either way: Nearly every lead in the poll falls within the survey’s margin of error.
I will be honest: Joe Biden is pretty much my last choice to be our party’s nominee. He has recently called one of my favorites “an elitist and condescending” and “a socialist” . While I like the Medicare for All plan that has no premiums, no deductibles, no co-pays, includes vision, hearing, and prescription drugs without raising taxes on the middle class, I think it is conceivable that it could imperil our ability to defeat Trump. 150 million people have health insurance from a company, not from the federal government. They may doubt that such a plan could pass Congress or that the costs can be covered without raising taxes or exploding the national debt (although Republicans never seem to care about that when they pass for instance Trump’s budget busting tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations). I would prefer her Medicare for All plan over anything else, but most voters are not as progressive as I am and the fact is that it is unlikely to be able to made into law. I prefer Senator Warren a lot more than Former Vice President Joe Biden. However, what is most important is that our nominee be the one who gives us the best shot at defeating Trump unless it is clear that all of our top candidates are clearly going to win the electoral college.
Based upon the general election polling, Biden has the best chance at winning the electoral college (he is actually mostly ahead in swing states) and the others like Warren are mostly behind Trump in the electoral college and are less likely to defeat Trump. This means if we choose Senator Warren, we are beginning behind Trump in the electoral college, not a good place to start from. Even if we suspect that Biden is likely to drop in polling due to mistakes, we have data which is more than a suspicion that Warren is already behind. So, even if Biden is going to drop, that does nothing to move Senator Warren ahead of Trump in the electoral college. Our suspicion could be due to bias and, in any event, it is not a fact or a data point. I know that Biden’s performance in the primary according to polling has been poor since he has lost around 16 points since his high point around 42 percent. Moreover, Biden struggles with progressives who are the most active in primaries and in the general election. I do know that the winner of the primary is almost always the strongest general election candidate because they have the most support from the party’s voters and the amount of support a candidate has from his or her party’s voters will determine if he or she wins. Biden seems lackluster in his campaigning he is not drawing large crowds. His poll numbers in the primary, again, have been falling. It is possible that Senator Warren’s general election poll numbers will improve after winning Iowa and/or New Hampshire …. There may be Democrats who right now will not admit that they will support Senator Warren in the general election because they prefer another candidate. This is why I sometimes have some reservation about head to head general election polls this early in the primary. Nevertheless, we are talking about starting from behind and then working and hoping to move her up in the swing states. On the other hand, many people may believe that she is inherently, intrinsically a weaker candidate in the rust belt where several important swing states are found. While Senator Warren does not have universal name recognition, she does have strong name recognition. Name recognition is not the culprit here. It could be other Democrats who dislike Senator Warren refusing to admit or acknowledge that they will vote for her against Trump because they do not want to help Senator Warren win the primary by giving her a narrative that she will win the electoral college in the general election.
I find the fact that only Joe Biden is ahead in swing state polls and he is not far ahead a very jarring fact considering how unpopular Donald Trump is. We all need to focus on the polls in swing states. We should largely ignore national polls even if in those national polls Senator Warren is ahead of Donald Trump since we use the electoral college. Do we want to start behind in the swing states that will determine who wins the electoral college ? Do we want to hope that her numbers in the swing states improves as the primary moves on ? We really need to think about this. We also have several other candidates that we can choose from (they also are behind in the swing states but they have less name recognition): Senator Amy Klobuchar, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Senator Harris, and Senator Bernie Sanders.