The Daily - Who’s Actually Electable in 2020?

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

The New York Times and Siena College conducted a major new poll, tackling the biggest questions about the 2020 presidential race: How likely is President Trump to be re-elected and which Democrat is best positioned to defeat him? The results reveal that the president remains highly competitive in the battleground states likeliest to decide his re-election, with Democratic candidates struggling to win back the support of white working-class voters who backed Mr. Trump in 2016. The poll also presents a snapshot of how the top Democratic candidates might fare in the general election — a critical question for Democratic voters hoping to take back the White House. Guest: Nate Cohn, a domestic correspondent for The Upshot at The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: The new poll suggests Senator Elizabeth Warren might struggle with some battleground swing voters, and found evidence that both gender bias and ideological doubts were hurting her.The top Democratic presidential candidates are locked in a close race in the Iowa caucuses, a key early test in the nomination race. But there, Ms. Warren currently has a slight edge. Here are five theories about what “electability” means in the 2020 race.

Hi, may I speak with Jack? Hi Jack, my name is Taylor. I'm just calling from the Siena College Research Institute. We're just speaking briefly today to voters in your area. No one will try to sell you anything. Have I reached you on a landline or a cell phone? Do you have time to take a survey? It just takes about 10 minutes. Okay, are you sure? It's very important. Okay, are you sure? It's very important. Okay, thank you. You too. Bye. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.

This is The Daily. Today. Now, if the 2020 U.S. presidential election was held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Joe Biden or Donald Trump? The Times conducts a major new poll that tackles the biggest questions of the 2020 presidential race. And now for the next set of questions, tell me which of the two Democrats you'd be likelier to support. How likely is Donald Trump to be reelected? And which Democrat is best positioned to defeat him? It's Tuesday, November 5th.

Nate Cohn, this morning, The Times released this poll that you have been working on. That's, as best I can tell, the biggest poll The Times has done in the 2020 campaign. What is the story of this particular poll? I think we decided to pursue this project for two main reasons. The first is because of electability. Polls show that Democrats are obsessed with how to beat the president. They say that they would rather vote for a candidate who they thought had the best chance to beat President Trump, even more so than someone who they agree with most on the issues. And we thought that was an issue that we didn't know very much about, that we didn't have very much data that could address that question of what kinds of candidates, what kinds

of issues, what kinds of messages are likeliest to have an advantage in the general election. The second reason is because in the last election, the polls, you know, basically got it wrong. The national polls were okay. They showed Hillary Clinton ahead, and indeed, she won the national vote. But the election was decided in a series of battleground states where the polls showed Hillary Clinton with a wide advantage. Now to Decision 2016 coverage tonight and the push for Pennsylvania, which will be a key battleground state. They showed almost across the board that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton is holding a nine point lead over.

Trailing Hillary Clinton by about seven points. Clinton ahead 46 percent to 36 percent for Trump. When you're losing that bad in all the swing states after the conventions, not to put too fine a point on it, but if you're a presidential candidate, you have to change that. That's an emergency. And those polls were wrong for a number of reasons. I think the biggest reason is because they underrepresented the number of white voters without a college degree. That's the president's base. But the polls that were conducted in these critical states tended to drastically underestimate the number of white working class voters who were part of the electorate. Why would that be? In general, well-educated voters are likeliest to respond to political surveys.

That's been true for a long time. But many state pollsters, unlike the national polls, I should note, did not adjust for that, which had significant consequences for the overall result. adjust for that, which had significant consequences for the overall result. And so in order to accomplish those two goals, we knew that we had to conduct surveys in the six closest states that were carried by the president, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina. And we got an Iowa bonus on the side. And we asked voters of all parties whether they would vote for Donald Trump or one of the three leading Democratic candidates in head-to-head matchups, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. And we had to make sure that we did an appropriate job of representing the groups that decided the last election. And we also asked them about their views on a range of issues.

Right. Our colleague, Daily Producer Jessica Chung, actually went up to Siena to watch polling in action for this actual project. Hey, I'm Jess. I'm a producer with the Daily. Hi. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions. Yeah, that's fine. Right, so that call center is in the basement of a dormitory. Well, my name's Taylor Buckingham, and I work for the Siena College Research Institute, and I'm currently a second semester senior. I'm Connor McCann, and I'm doing Siena College Research Institute and I'm currently a second semester senior. I'm Connor McCann and I'm doing

Siena College Research Institute polling. My name is Jim Campagna. I'm a retired New York State Department of Taxation and Finance worker and I'm doing this job at Siena as a part-time gig. The interviewers who are placing these telephone calls are a mix of students and retirees and people who make these calls as their second jobs. Oh, okay. Is this not Jeanette? All right, well then I appreciate your time. All right, thank you. They might spend all day trying to reach only a handful of respondents who actually pick up the phone and complete our survey.

And what number call was that? That was number 32. And how many did you complete? Two so far. I've called people about 200 calls in two hours, and I will get no surveys. 23, and I've got one. That was 88. I finally got one.

Not bad. I think I had 130 attempts in two hours, and that was my sixth successful call. Oh, great. Yes. Yeah. Right. I mean, listening to the tape that Jess got from that call center, it is striking just how hard it is to poll people. I mean, logistically, just a huge challenge to get people to answer the phone and then actually answer the questions.

Right. to answer the phone and then actually answer the questions. Right. I would guess we made several hundred thousand telephone calls in order to get the 5,000 respondents that we ultimately received. Yeah, it feels like just about the most inefficient operation in the universe. It has to be. And it's gotten much more difficult over the last few years. Do you think tone matters when you pick up the phone and call people? Yeah, for sure. They tell you that you don't want to sound like a robot. And sometimes it's hard to because you're

reading off a screen. A stream of robo-callers deters everybody from picking up unknown numbers. Hello, I'm not selling you anything. I'm just doing a poll today. Otherwise, if you do it with a robot voice, they usually just hang up, or you get a pretty vulgar hang up or something like that.

So a bad tone is like, Hi, my name is Nahidito. That's a bad tone. And a good tone is like, Oh, hi, my name is Nahidito. How are you? Like, stuff like that, you know. And if I answer and I'm just like,

Hi, this is Taylor. I'm calling from the Siena College of Research, as opposed to, Hi, my name's Taylor. It's a different response. Fewer people have landlines than used to be true. People answer and they just, like, curse me out. Just a lot of yelling, screaming.

They'll tell you that, you know what, F off, all right? You know, stuff like that. Don't call me again. This is being recorded. You're in big trouble if you call me again. And yet it's the best option we have for reaching a representative sample of voters, even still. And how do those 5,000 or so respondents out of hundreds of thousands of calls you make, how did that ensure that you were doing as accurate a poll as possible, especially given the history that you just described of problems in 2016? Right. So there's

really two halves to what we do. One is that we do everything we can to make sure the people who we get are representative. And we go to great lengths to do that. For instance, we make sure that we call the right number of registered Democrats and Republicans in each state, the right number of young voters and older voters and high turnout voters and low turnout voters. And then once we have our sample, we then make statistical adjustments on the back end, despite the effort to make sure we talk to rural voters, to talk to low turnout voters. We still have too many people who have a college degree and we have to give more weight to the people who don't have one. So you encounter the same problems as the state polls in 2016, but it sounds like you think you're coming up with some sort of a fix, some sort of an adjustment that accounts for that same

problem. Right. So almost all of the top pollsters out there now do this technique called weighting, where they give more weight to respondents from the underrepresented groups. And in our polls, that mainly entails giving more weight to less educated voters of any race. And so how long does this whole thing take? In this particular case, we started polling on October 13th and only wrapped up on October 30th, I believe. So about three weeks. Right. And then you get the data, which I assume is like Christmas for Nick. Very exciting. And I should note, I get an update on it every day. And if I don't get it in the

morning, then I'm like waiting for it and I can't do anything until I see what it is. Panic. Well, I'm not panicked. I just want to know, right? And so how am I supposed to do anything when I think that I'm about to see something that's more interesting? So when this data finally arrives, what does it tell you? We found that the president remains strikingly competitive in these states. I at least was surprised by it. He seems to be assembling a coalition that's not very different from the one that he had in 2016.

He still does really well among white voters without a degree. And why did that surprise you? Well, I mean, the national polls are, some of them are pretty cataclysmically bad for him, I would say. There are national polls out there that say that a majority of Americans think he should be impeached and removed from office right now. So for all of that to be true and him to sort of be doggedly competitive in these states, you know, while it's not stunning, I think, given the differences between these states and the country as a whole, it is still somewhat surprising, I think. Thinking about the upcoming presidential election in 2020, do you think you're definitely going to vote for President Trump?

I sure will. Probably going to vote for Trump, probably going to vote for the Democratic nominee, or definitely going to vote for the Democratic nominee? No, definitely going to vote for Mr. Trump. Okay. Do you approve or disapprove of the job that Donald Trump is doing as president? I definitely approve. Do you somewhat approve or do you strongly approve? I strongly approve. Okay. When you say he's doing well in these states, can you give us a little specificity? Yeah, he's in a close race in every one of these states against all of his potential opponents. Nothing is out of reach for him at this point. He could win all six of them.

The reverse is true, too. The Democrats could win all six of them. There's a year to go. But, you know, I think that if you were looking at these national polls, you might have expected him to be at a substantial disadvantage. Okay, so that's how the president is positioned in these six states. What do these polls tell us about how his Democratic competitors stack up against him in those same states? So we found that Joe Biden would defeat the president if the election were held today in most of these states. He didn't do exceptionally well, but he ran an average of four points better than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. And that would be enough for him to win the election if these results were right. I don't think that's great news for Biden. Why is that not great news for Biden? Well, I mean, his whole pitch is about electability. And, you know, he's ahead, but it's not by the sort of decisive margin that would make him seem like a sure bet to win,

even if it indicates he has an advantage if the election were held today. Bernie Sanders and the president were locked in a very tight race. But Bernie Sanders did lead among registered voters in the three states that really cost Hillary last time, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. An interesting wrinkle is that a lot of Bernie Sanders' support comes from people who don't have her track record of voting or who say they aren't sure whether they'll vote. And then the story is a little bit more complicated still for Elizabeth Warren. Her results were worse than I thought they would be. The president led her in five of the six states. He led her in North Carolina and Florida by comfortable margins. He led in Michigan by comfortable margin, even though Bernie Sanders was ahead there. She only led the

president among registered voters in Arizona. And even that dissipated when you looked at the likeliest voters. So overall, she trailed by two points across these states among registered voters. That's the same as Hillary Clinton's performance. So if the election were held today, and if these results are right, Elizabeth Warren would lose the president. In every... In all six of these states, I think. to the president. In every... In all six of these states, I think. Yeah, so I got a hold of the gentleman on his phone.

He was a Democrat, but he was kind of on the fence with certain Democratic nominees. He said that he didn't like Elizabeth Warren and all the other Democratic nominees he also didn't agree with, but he doesn't like Trump. So he's kind of at a middle ground

as to what to do for the 2020 election. We'll be right back. Nate, it's been my sense that Warren is basically neck and neck, and in some cases, running ahead of Biden in these national Democratic primary polls. So if that's true, how can it be that she's lagging so far behind Biden in her ability to beat Trump? Yeah, I was surprised by how poorly she fared in our polls. But six percent of voters told us that they would support Joe Biden against the president,

but would not support Elizabeth Warren and head-to-head matchup against Donald Trump. And that 6% is going to be hard for her. We asked every one of these voters whether they agreed with the statement that Elizabeth Warren was too far to the left for them to feel comfortable supporting her. And a majority of them said they agreed with that statement. We also asked all of these voters whether they agreed with the statement that most of the women who run for president just aren't that likable. And 40% of them said they agreed with that statement. That's a very specific way of wording that question.

Yeah, we were trying to give people permission to say that, in their mind, there's just something wrong with the women who have run for office without making them say they don't want a woman to be president. You're essentially giving people permission through indirect language to be sexist. Sexist, I think, right. So you're saying that of those who can support Joe Biden over President Trump, but cannot support Warren over Trump, their big issues are her policies and her gender. Do you know which of these two are the most important driver? For each set of questions, I'm going to describe two hypothetical Democrats. Tell me which of the two Democrats you would be likelier to support for the Iowa...

Well, we asked a number of questions that might help lend some insight on that. A Democrat who promises to replace the current health care system with Medicare for all, or a Democrat who promises to improve the existing health insurance system? A Democrat who is more moderate than most Democrats, or a Democrat who is more moderate than most Democrats or a Democrat who is more liberal than most Democrats. A Democrat who promises to bring politics in Washington back to normal or a Democrat who promises to fundamentally change America. We ask people, you know, whether they'd like a more moderate Democrat or a more liberal Democrat. And they do say they'd prefer a more moderate one, but not 100 to nothing. It's like 75 to 25.

And then we ask these questions about Warren personally. For each of the following candidates, tell me whether you're very confident that they would beat Trump, somewhat confident that they would beat Donald Trump, not very confident or not at all confident that they would beat Donald Trump. Elizabeth Warren, very confident, somewhat confident, not very confident, not at all confident. You know, they have an unfavorable view of Warren by about a two to one margin. You know, that matches up roughly well with the question that we asked them about whether they like female candidates, with about 40 percent of them saying that they agree that they're unlikable.

So, you know, when I sort of put it all together, I think that they're roughly equal in their contribution. One interesting lens for considering this is Bernie Sanders, because he fares better than Warren versus Trump versus the president and worse than Biden does against the president. So he's kind of in the middle. He's basically halfway in between the two. And part of the reason why he would underperform Biden is because he would lose some of these voters who are against a more left leaning liberal Democratic candidate. But perhaps he could fare better than Warren despite having a fairly similar set of views on the issues because there's just something about Bernie

that makes him more attractive to voters than Elizabeth Warren. And I think you could argue that gender is one of the principal factors that we'd have to consider there. Nate, who is a voter who would support Joe Biden against Trump but would not support Elizabeth Warren against Trump? Is

there a demographic that comes to mind from this poll? I'll offer two archetypes. One is an affluent suburban male who's somewhat conservative. He really doesn't like President Trump, but he also really doesn't like Medicare for All or, you know, the progressive left wing of the Democratic Party. Gender could be a factor as well, wouldn't rule it out. But I think that just on the policy merits, it's a consistent story that this is someone who doesn't like Trump, but would not accept a particularly left wing nominee. But would support Biden. But would support Biden.

And then I think the second archetype I might offer is a young voter who, you know, has some conservative views on cultural issues. Maybe they don't like PC culture, for instance. And for some reason, Elizabeth Warren, it just doesn't resonate with them very much. We spoke to one woman from Florida. She said, quote, there's just something about her that I just don't like.

I just don't feel like she's a genuine candidate. I find her body language to be off-putting. She's very cold. She's basically a Hillary Clinton clone. And when asked about the women running for president more generally, she said they're super unlikable. So it actually turns out that among persuadable voters, women are a little likelier than men to say they agree that most of the women running for president are unlikable. That's fascinating. Yeah.

Nate, this poll would seem to deliver some pretty sobering news to Democrats. The president is performing at a very competitive level in these six crucial swing states. And from everything this poll just told us, the general election voter is nowhere near as far to the left as the Democratic primary voters who love, for example, Elizabeth Warren. Yeah, I think it's a tough poll for Democrats to take right now. They might look at our data and consider other options. They might try and pursue a blue Texas

or Georgia that maybe could make up for their weakness in these whiter working class states. They might consider whether they ought to look at some of these other candidates again, maybe an Amy Klobuchar or a Cory Booker, who knows, someone who's closer to a compromise between the two wings of the party. They might conclude that they have to try and change the composition of the electorate, that they may be trailing among registered voters now, but after a year of registering new young and non-white voters,

perhaps they could take the lead. But with the electorate we have today, and with the question of electability in mind, it seems like voters today are likeliest to support a moderate Democratic nominee. But there's a lot more to a candidate than whether you're a moderate or a liberal. Moderates aren't assured to win this election. People on the left aren't assured to lose it either. Right now, with these particular set of candidates, Elizabeth Warren fares the worst against President Trump. Joe Biden fares the best. And on balance, the voters who seem to be switching from candidate to candidate are concerned that the major Democratic nominees are too far to the left. There's no guarantee that that's how it'll stick, but that's where things are now. Nate, thank you very much.

Thanks for having me. I think Iowa is much easier to call than Michigan. They're just much easier to stay on the phone and really, once you say 10 minutes, like they're willing to do the 10 minutes once it's about politics, but Michigan was a little bit harder. Iowa has been a pleasure so far. People are very nice, but I can't say the same for Michigan.

It was very difficult to do Michigan. They were not willing to do the survey and mostly they hung up on you. When I called Michigan, nobody wanted to answer the phone at all. I would definitely say Iowa has been the easiest state so far. If you were to rank the six states in terms of friendliness, how would you rank them?

Definitely Iowa. Michigan at the bottom. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, the Trump administration formally notified the United Nations that it would withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, fulfilling a promise made by the president back in 2017. Under the president's plan, the U.S. will leave the agreement, the most ambitious plan to curb carbon emissions in history,

on November 4th, 2020, the day after the next presidential election. The U.S. is the first and only country to try to leave the accord, amid a growing body of evidence that climate change will lead to food shortages, worsening wildfires, and devastating floods. And... These are real lives, real people, with real families, and with real friends. And they get to go home. Oklahoma has carried out the largest commutation of prisoners in U.S. history,

allowing nearly 500 inmates serving time for low-level nonviolent crimes to walk free and return to their families. You know, I've been out of her life for three years, but she's my hope. She's never given up on me. And all I have to say is thank you. The commutation followed a 2016 referendum in which Oklahoma residents voted to shrink the state's prison population and downgrade many crimes, like drug possession, from felonies to misdemeanors. Many of those released on Monday had been convicted of crimes that would no longer require prison time under the state's new rules.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.