Let me add the following to the mix. Via the Center for Politics: Electoral College Rating Changes: Upper Midwest Moves After Biden’s Debate Disaster.
The short version is that Michigan moved from “leans D” to “toss-up” and Minnesota went from “likely D” to “leans D.” This is bad news for Democrats, but again, not the devastation that should fuel a panic.
The broader context:
An Ipsos/FiveThirtyEight survey of voters taken before and after the debate showed that the share of likely voters considering voting for Biden only dropped 1.5 points, from 48.2% to 46.7%, and the share of those considering voting for Trump only increased 0.4 points, from 43.5% to 43.9%. Other polls also generally showed only modest movement. Dan Guild, a polling chronicler who wrote a piece for the Crystal Ball last week on the importance of those who just somewhat disapprove of Biden’s job performance, noted Tuesday that Biden’s margin on average against Trump had dipped a little more than a point when comparing post-debate polls to pre-debate polls conducted by the same pollster.
Overall, though, we’re afraid we’re going to have to give that old, familiar, and unsatisfying answer about the polling—we’d like to see more data before coming to conclusions about whether the race has fundamentally changed, and any big changes we do see could be because of partisan non-response (in other words, energized Republicans being likelier to respond to polls than depressed Democrats, something that seemed to artificially deflate Barack Obama’s support after a poor first debate with Mitt Romney in 2012).
Still, this comes at a time when Biden is already behind, so even if he doesn’t meaningfully fall further back, he really needed the debate to improve his numbers.
So the real issue is that the debate didn’t help (which was the hope of many Democrats). Moreover, the harm has yet to materialize in the numbers.
Again, setting aside everything else that has been said on this topic, does anyone think there is enough evidence to convince a sitting president to not stay in the race?
