The pundit class has it wrong. President Joe Biden is in a much better place than the polls suggest. Yes, Biden is behind Republican challenger and former President Donald Trump when looking at the aggregate of the polls in each of the swing states. The betting markets have had Trump in the lead for the last year. And Biden’s age and cognitive agility have been hot topics. But all of these are lagging indicators of where we will be in November.
The economy is improving, and an improving economy should lift all ships, including Biden’s. But even this misses the central point: An improving economy also changes the issue landscape. And the emergent issue landscape today favors Biden.
As pollsters, we look at a variety of metrics when assessing an election. One of these includes what Americans are most worried about, what we call the “main issue.” These indicators have interesting properties. Empirically, candidates strongest on the main problem win the election 85% of the time. We pay special attention to this metric as the campaign unfolds–whoever owns the main issue will typically win the election. Take Biden and COVID-19 in 2020, George W. Bush and national security in 2004, or Bill Clinton and the economy in 1992.
The main issue is looking better for Biden. Over the last few months, the number of Americans who say the economy is the nation’s number one issue has fallen, while other issues, particularly “political extremism or threats to democracy” and “immigration,” have picked up steam as top concerns among Americans. With the economy continuing to perform well, we are likely to see it fall further down the priority list.
The issue that will replace the economy
Here, we are unsure. Presently, our polling shows that “political extremism or threats to democracy” leads the pack in first place at 23% in importance with “the economy” and “immigration” roughly tied for second at 19% and 17%, respectively. “Threats to democracy” is an issue that Biden dominates. It was a key theme for Democrats in the 2022 midterms and will be a central one in 2024. In our research, it serves as a strong proxy for the anti-Trump vote. In contrast, “immigration” is a Trump and Republican issue. Trump won on it in 2016 and used it to govern throughout his administration.
Biden’s State of the Union speech in March recognizes this shift in the issue landscape to terrain more favorable for the president. He led with “democracy” and cited the term a total of twelve times in his address. This will be the rallying cry for his 2024 campaign. Biden hit the public opinion mark on this one.
However, with the main issues–democracy and immigration–so close in importance, things can change. While we believe that the spat with the border bill will do little to change Trump’s dominance of the issue, other things might. If more problems at the border pull focus, like an influx of migrants or some other unforeseen immigration-related event that causes immigration to resurface as the main issue, that would work in Trump’s favor. However, right now that isn’t the case, with concern about democracy edging out worries about immigration.
Considering our 85% rule (that the main issue is critical in determining electoral outcomes), the implications here are clear. If “threats to democracy” stays the number one issue, Biden is likely to win the election. Biden has a 12-percentage point lead over Trump on democracy. If it is immigration or the economy, the odds will shift back toward Trump. Trump has an average 8-percentage point lead over Biden on these issues.
Critically, we believe the polling industry is producing false positives. Most polling shops do not have “political extremism” or “saving democracy” as attributes in their most important problems questions.
However, in the experimentation that Ipsos has done, we see that adding “political extremism or threats to democracy” as a main worry significantly shifts what Americans cite as their chief concern compared to more typical main issue questions. Because of this oversight, most public pollsters show “immigration” as the dominant issue of the day. The market right now has a blind spot and is not capturing a critical concern among the public.
The shifting sands are good for Biden. The picture is still not yet completely pristine. But it looks like “saving democracy” will be the issue this electoral season beating out “the economy” and “immigration.” Moreover, the anti-Trump vote is real. Not to mix metaphors, but “anti-Trump” may trump many of Biden’s blemishes. Ultimately, all these indicators suggest that Biden might be down, but not out.
Clifford Young is the president of Ipsos. Chris Jackson is senior VP at Ipsos Public Affairs.
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