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Our listeners have lots of questions about polling. At this point in a usual primary season, still weeks away from Super Tuesday, most of the attention of polling would be on who might capture the nomination. But this year, with the race all but set, we’re anticipating nine months of polling on two men we already know very well. Today, to prepare for that future and to answer the many questions on the subject, we go behind the scenes with the New York Times polling team. And Nate Cohn, our chief political analyst, introduces us to “double haters” and other swingy voters he thinks will decide 2024.

Persons: Nate Cohn Organizations: Super, New York Times

☆ An Important Victory
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-24 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Not quite, but it’s a reasonable question after New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary delivered a clear victory for Donald Trump last night. Trump’s 12-point margin of victory is not extraordinarily impressive in its own right. In fact, he won by a smaller margin than many pre-election polls suggested. What makes Trump’s victory so important — and what raises the question about whether the race is over — is that New Hampshire was Haley’s best opportunity to change the trajectory of the race. It was arguably her best opportunity to win a state, period.

Persons: New Hampshire’s, Donald Trump, Trump, Nikki Haley, Haley’s Organizations: Republican, New Locations: ”, New Hampshire

☆ Last Exit Before Trump: New Hampshire
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-22 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Let’s be blunt about the stakes of the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. If Donald J. Trump wins decisively, as the polls suggest, he will be on track to win the Republican nomination without a serious contest. Ron DeSantis’s decision to suspend his campaign and endorse Mr. Trump is only the latest example. The polling by state isn’t much better for Nikki Haley, the only remaining opponent for Mr. Trump. He leads Ms. Haley by at least 30 points in all of the states after New Hampshire until Super Tuesday.

Persons: Donald J, Trump, Ron DeSantis’s, Nikki Haley, Haley Organizations: New, Trump, New Hampshire, Super Locations: New Hampshire, Iowa, New

☆ The Lost DeSantis Moment
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-22 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

There are countless reasons Mr. DeSantis fell apart and ultimately ended his campaign Sunday — including that his opponent proved once again to be a juggernaut. Perhaps Mr. DeSantis might have won the nomination in most other years, if he hadn’t been going against a former president. But rather than dwell on his losing campaign, it’s worth returning to his apparent strength at the outset — that brief moment when Mr. DeSantis, or at least the idea of Mr. DeSantis, routinely led Mr. Trump in high-quality head-to-head polls. In the eight years since Donald J. Trump won the Republican nomination, this was the only moment when Republican voters appeared willing to go a different direction. Mr. DeSantis didn’t capitalize on the moment, but nonetheless it’s the only glimpse we’ve had into the post-Trump Republican Party.

Persons: Ron DeSantis, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, DeSantis, Trump, Donald J, we’ve Organizations: Republican, Trump Republican Party

☆ Even the Battle for Second Turned Out Well for Trump in Iowa
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-16 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Better still for Mr. Trump, neither Mr. DeSantis nor Ms. Haley posted a strong second-place showing that might have bestowed clear momentum for future races. He also excelled among white evangelical Christians and self-described “very conservative” voters — two groups that held him back here eight years ago. Mr. DeSantis was dealt a serious setback to his already ailing candidacy. No upcoming contest plainly offers Mr. DeSantis a better chance of victory, and his poll numbers are even weaker in the states ahead. Either way, Ms. Haley has overtaken Mr. DeSantis as Mr. Trump’s nearest, if still distant, rival.

Persons: Trump, DeSantis, Haley, DeSantis’s, Trump’s, playbook, he’s Organizations: Iowa Republican Locations: New Hampshire, Iowa, state’s, Johnson County

☆ Why Biden’s Weakness Among Young Voters Should Be Taken Seriously
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-27 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

For whatever reason, they fail to reach the Democratic-leaning young voters who propelled Mr. Biden to victory in 2020. They’re reaching the young voters who backed Mr. Biden. In the states with party registration, for instance, the Times/Siena young voters were registered Democrats by a 13-point margin, 35 percent to 22 percent. It’s important to emphasize that just because the polls “look” right doesn’t mean they are right. Mr. Biden has just a 76-20 lead among young voters either registered as Democrats or who have previously voted in a Democratic primary.

Persons: Biden, Mr, we’ve, Trump, Biden isn’t, don’t, It’s, leaners Organizations: Democratic, Times, Mr, Democrats, Biden ’ Locations: Siena

☆ We Did an Experiment to See How Much Democracy and Abortion Matter to Voters
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-21 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Do abortion and democracy matter to voters? Only around a quarter said that issues like democracy and abortion were more important to their vote than the economy. It raises the possibility that the usual poll questions simply failed to reveal the importance of abortion, democracy and perhaps other issues as well. With that in mind, we tried an experiment in our latest Times/Siena poll. We gave each group a set of two hypothetical Republican candidates based on views on abortion and democracy.

Persons: Donald J, Trump, — Organizations: New York Times, Siena College Locations: Siena

☆ The Crisis in Issue Polling, and What We’re Doing About It
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-20 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

If you do this exercise for previous elections, issue polling failures look more like the norm than the exception. With such a poor track record, there’s a case that “issue” polling faces a far graver crisis than “horse race” polling. The crisis facing issue polling is almost entirely non-falsifiable — just like the issue polling itself. Most pollsters probably assume they’re good at issue polling; after all, unlike with horse race polls, they’re almost never demonstrably wrong. These causal questions are beyond what a single poll with “issue” questions can realistically be expected to answer.

Persons: Joe Biden, pollsters, Donald J, they’re, It’s Organizations: Republican, Voters, The Times, CBS, Pew Research, ABC, Washington Locations: Siena

Some said he was too old, or they didn’t think he’d done much as president. Black voters in particular said they didn’t believe he was doing enough to help Black Americans. Though many said they’d probably vote for Mr. Trump, nearly all said that they weren’t excited about either option, and that Mr. Trump had personally offended them. A telephone call with a New York Times reporter is not the same as a conversation with friends or family. But it was an opportunity for a group of voters, some of them relatively disengaged, to think about the candidates, issues and campaigns.

Persons: Biden, they’d, Trump, hadn’t, It’s, Harris, Bridgette Miro, ” Organizations: Mr, New York Times Locations: Glendale, Ariz

☆ Tuesday Was Great for Democrats. It Doesn’t Change the Outlook for 2024.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-08 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Put simply: Tuesday’s results don’t change the picture for President Biden heading into 2024. The surveys show millions of voters who dislike Mr. Biden but remain receptive to other Democrats and support liberal causes. As a result, the same data showing Mr. Biden in jeopardy is entirely consistent with Democratic strength Tuesday. The crossover voteThe polls showed the Democrat winning Kentucky. They also show that voters disapprove of Mr. Biden and that Mr. Trump leads in the battleground states.

Persons: There’s, Biden, Mr, Trump Organizations: Democratic, Democrat, Kentucky Locations: Ohio

☆ Trump Now Leads Biden
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-05 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the last election, voters judged him to be more likable than Trump, to have a better temperament and to have a more appealing personality. Biden appears to be especially weak among young, Black and Hispanic voters. In a major departure from recent electoral trends, he and Trump are essentially tied among 18-to-29-year-old voters, even though young voters have tended to back Democrats by a wide margin in recent cycles. Among Black voters, more than 90 percent of whom usually back Democrats, Biden leads only 71-22. He holds only 50 percent of Hispanic voters across the battlegrounds, down from more than 60 percent in the last cycle.

Persons: Biden, “, ”, Trump, there’s Organizations: Trump, Black

Just as strikingly, Mr. Trump has cut Mr. Biden’s lead among nonwhite voters in half, not only with staggering gains among the younger part of that group but with more modest gains among older voters as well. Overall, Mr. Trump earns more than 20 percent support among Black voters, a tally that would be unprecedented in the post-Civil Rights Act era. In contrast, Mr. Biden has retained the entirety of his support among older white voters, helping him stay relatively competitive in the older and predominantly white Northern battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, even as Mr. Trump builds a more comfortable lead in the more diverse Sun Belt states. The poll suggests that it shouldn’t necessarily be difficult for Mr. Biden to reassemble his winning coalition — at least on paper. To win, he merely needs to reinvigorate voters from traditional Democratic constituencies, groups that the poll finds remain quite open to Democrats in a matchup against Mr. Trump.

Persons: Trump, Biden’s, Biden Organizations: Black, Civil, Democratic, Mr, — Locations: Michigan , Wisconsin, Pennsylvania

☆ Why Less Engaged Voters Are Biden’s Biggest Problem
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-30 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

First, let’s consider the 2,775 respondents from Group A:It’s relatively old: 31 percent are 65 or older; 9 percent are under 30. Next, let’s look at the 1,534 respondents from Group B:It’s relatively young: 26 percent are 18 to 29; 17 percent are 65 or older. But it’s actually Group B that backs Donald J. Trump in Times/Siena polling over the last year. Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden, 41-39, among Group B respondents, while Group A backs Mr. Biden, 47-43. “Group B” is people who did not vote in the 2022 midterms.

Persons: Biden’s, let’s, It’s, Biden, it’s, Donald J, Trump, Mr Organizations: New York Times, Trump, Times, Mr, “ Locations: Siena

☆ Fight for Speaker Reveals Four Types of House Republicans
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-23 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Up until a few weeks ago, no member of the House Freedom Caucus had ever gotten close to becoming House speaker. After Mr. Scalise withdrew, Mr. Jordan won 124 votes in the Republican House conference vote against Austin Scott, enough to earn his party’s nomination for speaker. In the public vote on the House floor, Mr. Jordan won 200 votes on the first ballot for speaker. That’s less than 40 percent of House Republicans. None of these votes offer a perfect measure of House Republicans.

Persons: Jim Jordan’s, Jordan, Kevin McCarthy’s, Steve Scalise, Scalise, Austin Scott, — Organizations: Caucus, Republicans, Mr, Republican, House Republican

☆ It’s Not a Race, Yet, in the Republican Primary
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-21 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Donald J. Trump’s lead in the Republican primary just keeps growing. He’s approaching the position of George W. Bush, who led John McCain by a similar margin at this stage of the 2000 race. The 2000 election is a helpful reminder that the race might still become more competitive. Mr. Bush skipped the first two debates, but Mr. McCain ultimately won New Hampshire, cleared the field of significant opponents, and ultimately won six more contests. That’s more than can be said right now for Mr. Trump’s competition, which would probably go 0 for 50 if states voted today.

Persons: Donald J, Trump’s, Ron DeSantis, Trump, George W, Bush, John McCain, McCain, didn’t Organizations: Republican, Fox News, Quinnipiac Locations: rarefied, New Hampshire

☆ Why Are Democrats Losing Ground Among Nonwhite Voters? 5 Theories.
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-15 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On the other hand, 63 percent of white voters say abortion should be at least mostly legal, a tally greatly exceeding the usual Democratic support among white voters. Democrats showed similar — if less acute — weaknesses with these voters in 2018 and during most Trump-era special elections. Many hold conservative views on issues, like opposition to same-sex marriage. These moderate or conservative nonwhite voters consider themselves Democrats because they see the party as representing them and their interests, not because they have party-line views on every issue. If so, Republican gains among nonwhite voters might naturally result from Democrats’ leftward shift over the last few years.

Persons: they’re, Mr, Biden, Democratic centrists, it’s, ’, Trump’s, Sanders, “, ” Organizations: Democratic, Trump, Republicans

☆ Consistent Signs of Erosion in Black and Hispanic Support for Biden
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-05 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

With more than a year to go until the election, there’s plenty of time for Mr. Biden to re-energize his former supporters. Weak support for Mr. Biden could easily manifest itself as low turnout — as it did in 2022 — even if many young and less engaged voters ultimately do not vote for Mr. Trump. Many of Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities — like his age and inflation — could exacerbate the trend, as nonwhite voters tend to be younger and less affluent than white voters. Issues like abortion and threats to democracy may also do less to guard against additional losses among Black and Hispanic voters, who tend to be more conservative than white Biden voters. They may also do less to satisfy voters living paycheck to paycheck: Mr. Biden is underperforming most among nonwhite voters making less than $100,000 per year, at least temporarily erasing the century-old tendency for Democrats to fare better among lower-income than higher-income nonwhite voters.

Persons: Biden, Mr, Trump Organizations: Times, Mr, Biden Locations: Siena

☆ The Race for Second Place: Making Sense of the G.O.P. Debate
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-24 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

How does Mr. DeSantis fit into this rubric? His decision to avoid fights over Ukraine and Jan. 6 now looks like a deft effort to avoid dividing his potential supporters. No, he didn’t go after Mr. Trump, but in pulling his punches he avoided alienating voters who like the former president. Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. DeSantis seemed to come out of the debate entirely unscathed: No one seriously attacked him at all. After all, he entered the debate in second place in high-quality polls and he’s always been the clear second choice of Mr. Trump’s supporters.

Persons: Burgum, Biden, Trump, Christie, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Mr, didn’t, DeSantis, he’s, Trump’s Organizations: Mr Locations: Ukraine

☆ It’s Not Reagan’s Party Anymore
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-10 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Mr. Trump’s first primary campaign amounted to a hostile takeover of the old Republican Party. Perhaps surprisingly, the poll found little evidence that Republican voters who still sit upon Mr. Reagan’s stool make up an outsized share of the G.O.P. Either way, Mr. Trump has more than 50 percent of the primary vote among the Reaganites — and more than 50 percent of the anti-Reaganite vote. Mr. Trump’s support among the vestigial, traditionally conservative wing of the party is a reminder that his takeover of the party didn’t necessarily amount to a total repudiation of the conservative agenda. After all, Mr. Trump still cut income taxes, attempted to repeal Obamacare and appointed Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

Persons: Trump’s, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Trump, Reagan, Roe, Wade, Mr Organizations: Republican Party, America, Republican, Reagan Locations: Iraq, Ukraine

☆ Is Trump Leaving an Opening in Iowa?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-04 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

But unlike the national poll, our Iowa poll has revealed a few cracks in Mr. Trump’s armor. debate on Aug. 23 in our national poll earlier this week. One is that it’s about survey administration: In an online survey, you see a long list of candidates, read them over, and then you choose one. The Democratic primary, however, is a case where more sophisticated modeling of the primary electorate might make a huge difference. My guess: if we had done an elaborate Democratic primary poll — and we did not, in the absence of a competitive race — Mr. Biden’s lead would have grown.

Persons: DeSantis, Trump, Will Hurd, Hurd, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ramaswamy, YouGov, Biden, Robert F, Kennedy Jr, Democratic leaners, Biden’s Organizations: Republican, Republicans, Democratic Locations: Iowa, Texas, Siena

☆ Can the Race Really Be That Close? Yes, Biden and Trump Are Tied.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-01 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

But Mr. Biden shows little strength of his own. Democrats can’t necessarily assume the race will snap back into a clear Biden lead once people tune into the race, either. They dislike Mr. Trump more than they dislike Mr. Biden, and the political environment, including promising economic news, seems increasingly favorable to Mr. Biden. And the upside for Mr. Biden among the dissenting 14 percent of voters isn’t necessarily as great as it might look. A two-point edge is certainly better for Mr. Biden than a tie, but it’s not exactly a commanding advantage.

Persons: Mr, Biden, can’t, Trump, —, wasn’t, David Leonhardt Organizations: The, Mr

☆ Why Trump Is So Hard to Beat
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-31 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Perhaps Mr. DeSantis or another Republican will peel away a few of these voters, but realistically this group isn’t going anywhere, maybe not even if Mr. Trump winds up being imprisoned. This group is probably about the same as the voters — 37 percent — who supported Mr. Trump in the polls on Super Tuesday in 2016. Most of the Republican electorate either doesn’t strongly support Mr. Trump in the primary or doesn’t support him at all. electorate seemingly devoted to Mr. Trump, the path to defeating him is exceptionally narrow. It requires a candidate to consolidate the preponderance of the rest of the Republican electorate, and the rest of the Republican electorate is not easy to unify.

Persons: —, “, Trump, It’s Organizations: Republicans —, Republican

☆ How Did We Do? A Review of 2022 Before Our First Poll of 2023.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-28 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +7 min

With the data from 2022 in and final, we’ve been poring over the data — including our experiment in Wisconsin — to identify opportunities for improvement. The big Wisconsin mail experiment — where we paid voters up to $25 dollars to take a mail survey — didn’t reveal anything especially alarming about our typical Times/Siena polls. On many measures — gun ownership, evangelical Christianity, vaccination status — the Times/Siena poll looked more conservative than the mail poll. The Wisconsin study did offer ambiguous evidence that Times/Siena phone respondents lean a bit farther to the left than the respondents to the mail survey. We’re reordering our questionnaires to let us look at and potentially use respondents who drop out of a survey early.

Persons: we’ve, we’ll, Donald J, Trump, MAGA, That’s, they’ve, We’re, Ron DeSantis Organizations: Times, Kansas, Democratic, Democrats, Republican Locations: Wisconsin, Siena

☆ Hard Questions if Biden’s Approval Doesn’t Follow Economy’s Rise
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

To this point in his presidency, it has been fairly easy to attribute his low ratings to economic conditions. But if inflation has been what’s holding Mr. Biden back, it’s hard to say it should hold him back for too much longer. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index surged 13 percent in July, reaching the highest level since September 2021 — the first full month Mr. Biden’s approval ratings were beneath 50 percent. There’s another factor that ought to help Mr. Biden’s approval rating: the onset of a new phase of the Republican primary campaign, including debates. Some of the Democratic-leaning voters who currently disapprove of Mr. Biden might begin to look at the Biden presidency in a different light.

Persons: it’s, Mr, Biden, — Organizations: University of Michigan, Republican, Democratic, Biden Locations: Britain, U.S, Weimar Germany

☆ What Really Happened in the Midterms?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-14 | by ( Nate Cohn | More About Nate Cohn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

More than eight months later, all the data from the 2022 midterm elections is — finally — final. The two most rigorous reports, from the Pew Research Center and Catalist, are finished. You might imagine ways to square the two claims, but neither report offers a clear way to reconcile these competing stories. Catalist, a Democratic data firm, doesn’t mention a word on the partisan makeup of the electorate, despite possessing the data to do so. The Pew report, meanwhile, is framed around explaining how Republicans won the House popular vote by three points — an important outcome, but one overshadowed by the Democratic hold in the Senate and the razor-thin Republican House majority.

Persons: ” Pew Organizations: Pew Research Center, Republicans, Biden, Democratic, Pew

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