Trump-Biden: A Close Race, and the Debate To Come Is Economic Policy

An article was published in The New York Sun recently under the headline, “Nightmare Scenario for GOP unfolding as Trump Surges in Primary Polls, Plummets in General Favorability,” with the subheadline, “New polling suggests Republicans’ fear that President Trump will win the nomination only to flop in the general are justified.”Full disclosure: I write a daily column for the Sun, which I happen to think is a terrific independent conservative online newspaper. Second, while I don’t know the reporter, whose name is Russell Payne, I am told that he’s an expert on polling and last year had a better track record than most in citing polls that did not show a GOP landslide.Now, Mr. Payne for this article relied on an Ipsos and Reuters poll conducted between April 5 and 6 that unsurprisingly showed Mr. Trump to be the clear favorite for the GOP nomination. Then he cited an ABC/Ipsos poll that found Mr. Trump’s overall approval ratings have dropped to a historic low, with only 25 percent of respondents expressing a favorable view vs. 61 percent unfavorable. The same poll found President Biden with a 34-48 percent split, favorable vs. unfavorable. So neither of them are winning beauty contests at this point. Now, there are polls and there are polls. Favorability of course doesn’t measure a head-to-head battle. There’s a big difference. That said, if you go up on Real Clear Politics, you find an Economist/YouGov poll taken April 1-4 with 1,319 registered voters, margin of error +/-3 points, that shows Mr. Trump at 44 percent, Mr. Biden at 42 percent. There’s also a Rassmussen poll of 971 likely voters taken March 30 to April 3 showing Mr. Trump up 7 points against Mr. Biden. It has a 3-point margin of error as well.Then there’s a McLaughlin and Associates poll taken April 1 with 1,000 likely voters showing Mr. Trump at 47 percent to Mr. Biden’s 43 percent It should be noted that Mr. Trump is a client of McLaughlin and Associates. Now, there are all sorts of polls showing Mr. Trump pounding Governor DeSantis by margins of some 30 points in the most recent taking. No surprise there. However, to go back to the Sun’s Mr. Payne, it is true that Mr. Trump’s favorables are worse than Mr. Biden’s.Again, going back to the RCP Average Spread between March 12 and April 11 shows Mr. Trump’s net favorability of -17.4 percent vs. Mr. Biden’s net favorability of -10.3 percent. That net is the net of favorable vs. unfavorable, in case you were wondering.Now, this is all horse race stuff, and I’m not really usually keen on political horse races because I’m an issues guy.As you all may know, I believe Mr. Biden to be a practitioner of big-government socialism and left-wing social planning, which are policy principles that I strongly oppose. Also, it’s no surprise having worked for Mr. Trump as his NEC director that I support what I perceive to be Mr. Trump’s advocacy of free-market capitalism, most particularly slashing taxes and regulations. I believe Mr. Biden has taken a strong Trump economy and slammed it into stagflation and probably an impending recession. I believe Mr. Trump gave us the best economy in several generations. So those are my biases. As always, viewers may agree or disagree with me. I respect all of it. I’d love to say that at least some of these polling numbers have something to do with economic policy. Perhaps, but at this stage probably not much. That debate is in front of us. But I will say, judging from all these political horse race polls, that the race most definitely isn’t over yet.From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.

Trump-Biden: A Close Race, and the Debate To Come Is Economic Policy

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