The two percentage points of vote share that Mr Trump has gained since 2020 come from three sources. The largest group is people who supported Mr Biden last time, but are now undecided, backing minor candidates or not planning to vote, who outnumber those making the same shift from Mr Trump’s camp. These voters account for 0.9 points of Mr Trump’s two-point improvement. Undecided former Biden voters are slightly younger, more likely to be black or female and less likely to have attended college than repeat Biden voters.
Mr Trump also enjoys an edge among people entering or returning to the major-party electorate. The share who say they did not vote for either him or Mr Biden in 2020 but have now settled on Mr Trump is 3.7%, slightly above the 3.3% who are choosing Mr Biden. This group adds another 0.3 of a point to Mr Trump’s tally.
The final group, swing voters, is the smallest but also the most impactful. Because people who flip between the two major-party candidates both subtract a vote from one side and add one to the other, they matter twice as much as do those who switch between a candidate and not voting at all. Such voters are rare—just 3% of respondents fall into this category—but Mr Trump is winning two-thirds of them. With 2% of participants shifting from Mr Biden to Mr Trump versus just 1% doing the opposite, swing voters contribute a full percentage point to Mr Trump’s two-way vote share.
The most intriguing pattern in YouGov’s data, however, is probably an equally powerful factor that has nothing to do with ideology. Compared with committed partisans, swing voters are vastly more likely to have children aged under 18: 47% of those flipping from Mr Biden to Mr Trump and 40% of those switching the other way are currently raising children, compared with 22% of repeat Biden voters and 19% of consistent Trump ones. And once the effects of race and parenthood are combined, the disparities are striking.
This is just depressing. When Trump was elected in 2016, I assumed it was a weird time and people didn’t really know him and just thought of him as a reality TV person. The voters have had 8 solid years of his fuckups and dumb shit and it’s still close. I don’t know what more these people need to see. Maybe folk don’t like Bidens particular stance on a topic but compare each one to Trumps which is demonstrably worse.
In 2016, I thought middle america could spot a carpet bagger from a mile away. Frankly, I think there’s many who would consider him “an imperfect vessel” who still will get done what needs to get done.
For the swing voters, they want to know if they can eat next week, set their kids up for a life that’s not as difficult as theirs, and maybe retire. I don’t think either one of the candidates do this, so swing voters are left with, “Was my life better under Trump or Biden”. Not a fair metic, but politics never was.
Inevitably, I’ll get the people on here saying the polls are unreliable. Sure. That doesn’t change the fact that this is going to be close. Far closer than the electoral votes will reflect.
And the people that matter will be the groups highlighted in this article. Especially those who live in the six or seven swing states. And not, surprisingly, online leftists. I get there’s catharsis in flogging the people you see as responsible for the possiblity of the failure of democracy and possibly entering authoritarian and rule. But I’d you want to be effective, strategic efforts matter. Be effective.
Well said.Knowledge is power. The more data we have, the more we can change future polls by influencing these groups. That’s just how it works. These people aren’t immutable; it’s just that Democrats have only just begun campaign season while Trump has literally been campaigning since he was last in office.
I mean, the online leftist
looking for catharsiscorrectly pointing out how moderates suck ass and their shitty disappointing policies have led us to this point could possibly work out for all of us. I can very much imagine Haley voters reading me or other lefty whiners pointing out how crap Biden is and thinking to themselves “Well if those people hate him so much maybe he actually is ok.”
The Economist thinks that the “Oh I’m socially liberal but economically conservative, I don’t care about human rights abuses so long as they don’t happen in my wealthy neighborhood or make me late for golf/yoga” voters who they’ve always spoken for are the most important ones to chase in this election, shocking
I wish they’d have dug deeper on why parents are more likely to flip. The only thing I could see appealing to them about Trump is his fight against “woke” in schools.
I really really hope polls have yet to properly account for millennials and zoomers as they failed to do the previous 2 cycles.
