Quote:
Originally Posted by SutterBrother
In a nutshell - special elections are more accurate than polling. Dems won those, or overperformed.
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Not recently. In the 30 contested special elections since the November 2023 elections, Democrats are about 2 points back of Biden's 2020 vote share in those same districts and they're barely ahead of Clinton's vote share. By contrast, in the 38 special elections in 2023 before then, they were outperforming Biden's 2020 vote by 3 points and Clinton's by nearly 7 points.
On top of that, Biden is personally unpopular, so it's reasonable to think that he could underperform Democrats. Even 1.5 years ago polls were showing a generic Democratic presidential candidate polling well ahead of Biden in a head to head vs. various Republican candidates. The only thing keeping Biden competitive right now is how disliked Trump is, but that might not be enough to win the election.