Forecasting election results is a pollster’s job, and many of them have been notoriously inaccurate

Biden’s Doomsday Scenario

President Biden made it official. He is running for re-election, clearly unconcerned about skeptics such as Nikki Haley, who predicted that Biden will not outlive his second term in office and that a vote for Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris, as Biden himself once mistakenly called her.

Predicting lifespans is a risky business best left to actuaries.

Forecasting election results is a pollster’s job, and many of them have been notoriously inaccurate, and that’s being diplomatic.

Until someone comes up with a foolproof method of picking winners, we’ll give pollsters one more chance to redeem themselves. And for now, most of them are pointing to Biden’s low job approval rating as his top risk factor.

The Real Clear Politics average poll shows that less than 43% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance, with more than 53% disapproving. Kyle Kondik, who edits pollster Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, contends there is a high correlation between approval ratings and election outcomes. He researched every election with an incumbent president since 1972, finding that most of them normally win 1% to 2% more of the vote than their approval rating indicates.

In more bad news for Biden, the Economist and YouGov, who have been collaborating on polls since 2009, report that incumbents only have a decent shot at re-election if their approval rating is 5% to 10% higher than their disapproval rating.

Biden’s spread is upside down — a negative 10%.

The bulk of voter dissatisfaction with Biden rests on his handling of a slack economy plagued by stubbornly high inflation and rising interest rates, now compounded by bank failures. However, Election Day 2024 is still 18 months away. Much can change between now and then.

Inflation is cooling, and with first-quarter economic growth reported at a lackluster 1.1%, many market watchers expect the Federal Reserve Board to cut rates in an election year, sparking a boost in consumer confidence that should boost Biden’s prospects.

Kondik also noted that not all Biden disapprovers were created equally. While some strongly disapprove of his job performance, he labels a second group as “soft” disapprovers. One reason the Democrats performed better than expected during the 2022 midterms is that enough of the “soft” disapprovers voted Democrat despite their concerns over Biden. These same soft disapprovers are probably going to be the deciding factor in the 2024 presidential race.

“If they vote against Biden en masse, he is likely doomed,” Kondik wrote, before adding: “Biden is very reliant on the Republican Party nominating a presidential candidate who does not have much appeal to these voters — and the GOP may deliver for Biden on that account.”

Picking On DeSantis

Kondik didn’t drop names, but it’s clear that even the soft Democrats take a hard line when it comes to Donald Trump. They wouldn’t vote for Trump even if he was running against Xi Jinping.

But what if Ron DeSantis wins the Republican nomination? The Real Clear Politics average poll shows Trump thrashing DeSantis by 28 points, yet the same poll also shows DeSantis beating Biden in more polls, and by a slightly wider margin than Trump would in the general election.

This is an anomaly that bears watching. Are Republicans so enamored of Trump that they would vote for him in the primaries even if DeSantis stands the better chance of defeating Biden?

In the meantime, DeSantis is getting a strong taste of how treacherous the news media can be when they want to tarnish someone’s reputation.

Politico has been harping on the fact that DeSantis lacks people skills, interviewing a member of Congress who served with DeSantis in the House of Representatives and complained that DeSantis was aloof and unfriendly. CNN interviewed a top Republican donor who complained that DeSantis doesn’t return his phone calls. Barak Ravid’s report of DeSantis’s recent visit to Jerusalem for the widely followed Axios — which has a strong left-wing slant in its reporting on Israel — was accompanied by a photo capturing a fleeting moment with a smiling DeSantis sitting next to a rather sullen-looking Miriam Adelson, a major Republican donor and publisher of Israel Hayom. On his next stop in England, a host of media outlets tripped over themselves to convey that British business leaders — the ones with stiff upper lips — found DeSantis to be tedious and uninspiring.

Every politician brings his personality to the table, and some of DeSantis’s perceived flaws are correctable. And that’s not to say the voter cares. President Biden isn’t exactly Mr. Excitement, nor is Trump the epitome of the jolly good fellow.

DeSantis would like to take the high ground and stay above the fray, but if he does declare his candidacy for 2024, he will have to punch back against the character assassination that threatens to derail his campaign before it even gets underway.

Marching On in May

Before last Thursday’s rally by right-wing supporters of judicial reform in Israel, my first thought was that this would be too little, too late. After all, reform supporters stood idly by for four months while anti-reform demonstrations gathered steam and support from local and international bigwigs.

After an estimated 600,000 pro-reform supporters showed up to encourage the Netanyahu coalition to “stop being afraid,” and “don’t give in” as they chanted throughout, the momentum has shifted.

Both sides have vowed to continue their demonstrations in May, even though judicial reform will be on the back burner. The government is facing a May 29 deadline to pass the 2023-24 state budget. Failure to do so will means the Knesset is automatically dissolved and Israelis will face their sixth election in a little more than four years.

Assuming the budget passes, with the usual drama and political theater, there may still be one more act to play out before judicial reform returns to the front burner.

Quietly, discussions are underway to put an early end to the three cases for which Prime Minister Netanyahu has been on trial since 2020. While there is no guarantee that the talks will come to fruition, and previous talks of a plea bargain have come to naught, this time, it’s one of the trial judges who is making the pitch. This judge has recommended the case go to criminal mediation before an impartial judge, who will review the testimony to date and find a way for all sides to climb down from their trees.

If a deal is struck to allow Bibi to admit to lesser charges while avoiding a tag of “moral turpitude,” akin to a felony charge, it will mark a quantum change in the political landscape.

Knesset members who split from the Likud or who have boycotted Netanyahu on the pretext that it would violate their ethics to be seen in the company of an accused felon would lose their moral high ground. Their additional claim that the Likud-sponsored judicial reform was merely a subterfuge to get Bibi off the hook by weakening the judiciary would also fall by the wayside.

Newly unshackled, Netanyahu would have two choices, both good from his political perspective. He would be free to potentially broaden his coalition by promising newcomers, among other things, a softer line on judicial reforms, thus lessening his dependence on the religious right and chareidi parties. And if they decline, he would be perched on high moral ground and could claim that the opposition against him was personal in nature all along and that he would now devote the rest of his term in office to promoting the various agendas of those who loyally stood by his side through five elections.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 959)