Poll Positions?
May 25, 2024 3:53 AM Subscribe
What percentage of Americans are aware that Biden and Trump will be their options on the ballot in November? Of voters?
I've heard analysts suggests that many (most?) Americans are unaware of who the nominees will be. Any data to back this up?
I've heard analysts suggests that many (most?) Americans are unaware of who the nominees will be. Any data to back this up?
I don't have that specific number for you, but the American electorate is remarkably uninformed. For example, recent polling showed that 17% of American's blame Biden for the end of Roe v Wade, and a sizable portion of Americans get their news from TikTok.
You can also google to get interesting stats on things like "How many Americans can name their US Senator".
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:50 AM on May 25 [3 favorites]
You can also google to get interesting stats on things like "How many Americans can name their US Senator".
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:50 AM on May 25 [3 favorites]
Josh Marshall and Kate Riga at TPM have been talking about polls and low-information voters. This was definitely true a couple months ago. I remember Riga talking about how surprising this was to political obsessives.
But going through recent Editor Blog entries, this point hasn't come up recently. There's a lot of adjacent stuff discussed, so this makes me think it is no longer true that people don't know who the nominees are or (more likely) this isn't a routine polling question so we don't have hard numbers.
posted by mark k at 7:26 AM on May 25 [2 favorites]
But going through recent Editor Blog entries, this point hasn't come up recently. There's a lot of adjacent stuff discussed, so this makes me think it is no longer true that people don't know who the nominees are or (more likely) this isn't a routine polling question so we don't have hard numbers.
posted by mark k at 7:26 AM on May 25 [2 favorites]
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posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:30 AM on May 25 [4 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:30 AM on May 25 [4 favorites]
Here's a Salon.com article by Amanda Marcotte from Jan 24 that discusses this, and includes a link to this January YouGov poll that suggests something like 43% of Americans at that time did not believe Trump would be the nominee. (The Salon.com article includes links to other pieces and news reporting about American awareness of the candidates, and I do recall other pieces from late 2023/early 2024 on the topic (also pieces arguing that many Democrats thought that Biden would or should drop out) - Marcotte's article was just the first one I remembered.)
Note, though, that this was months ago , in the very early stages of the Republican primaries, and mainstream news media (including Fox News) had spent months and were still spending thousands of person-hours putting forth the idea that DeSantis and/or Haley and/or some other Republican had a chance at winning the Republican nomination (ignoring both common sense and tons of Republican-only polling about Republican attitudes and beliefs about Trump.)
This was also before Trump lost his E. Jean Carroll defamation suit, and the New York civil fraud suit, and before the currently-running "hush money" - campaign finance violation trial. (IOW, lots of folks probably vaguely knew that Trump had legal problems, but at the time he hadn't really lost any big dollar high profile cases.)
In conclusion, in late 2023 and very early 2024 it was plausible that a large number of Americans (but not most) either didn't know or didn't believe that we'd see a Biden - Trump matchup again. There had been tons of articles on how old Biden is, and how low his approval numbers were, and how popular DeSantis or Haley were with the conservative powers that be, and how much approval DeSantis "anti-woke" attitudes had with Republican voters, and everyone knew Trump had a wide variety of legal troubles but nothing that really made major headlines for those who aren't political junkies, and lots of opinion pieces from prominent Democrats and liberals about how somehow we could find a better candidate than Biden, and coverage of the Republican debates that treated them as if they could possibly make a difference, and poll upon poll about Harris vs Trump and generic Democrat vs DeSantis and Biden vs Haley and Gavin Newsome vs generic Republican and piece after piece after piece trying to interpret and triangulate all these polls and you smush all this together and filter it through social media and mainstream media of widely varying quality out to people who aren't paying that much attention, and . . . yeah. You could see how a bunch of Americans would answer, "Biden vs Trump again? Are you sure? That doesn't sound right to me."
But both Biden and Trump clinched enough convention delegates on "Super Tuesday" in early March that they have guaranteed wins for the party conventions.
So, like mark k, I suspect we won't really have a current-ish hard data on it because nobody's asking anymore - barring a meteor strike or a medical emergency or an utterly unexpected legal development Biden & Trump are the candidates, so finding out how many people know or believe it is a moot point.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:22 AM on May 25 [5 favorites]
Note, though, that this was months ago , in the very early stages of the Republican primaries, and mainstream news media (including Fox News) had spent months and were still spending thousands of person-hours putting forth the idea that DeSantis and/or Haley and/or some other Republican had a chance at winning the Republican nomination (ignoring both common sense and tons of Republican-only polling about Republican attitudes and beliefs about Trump.)
This was also before Trump lost his E. Jean Carroll defamation suit, and the New York civil fraud suit, and before the currently-running "hush money" - campaign finance violation trial. (IOW, lots of folks probably vaguely knew that Trump had legal problems, but at the time he hadn't really lost any big dollar high profile cases.)
In conclusion, in late 2023 and very early 2024 it was plausible that a large number of Americans (but not most) either didn't know or didn't believe that we'd see a Biden - Trump matchup again. There had been tons of articles on how old Biden is, and how low his approval numbers were, and how popular DeSantis or Haley were with the conservative powers that be, and how much approval DeSantis "anti-woke" attitudes had with Republican voters, and everyone knew Trump had a wide variety of legal troubles but nothing that really made major headlines for those who aren't political junkies, and lots of opinion pieces from prominent Democrats and liberals about how somehow we could find a better candidate than Biden, and coverage of the Republican debates that treated them as if they could possibly make a difference, and poll upon poll about Harris vs Trump and generic Democrat vs DeSantis and Biden vs Haley and Gavin Newsome vs generic Republican and piece after piece after piece trying to interpret and triangulate all these polls and you smush all this together and filter it through social media and mainstream media of widely varying quality out to people who aren't paying that much attention, and . . . yeah. You could see how a bunch of Americans would answer, "Biden vs Trump again? Are you sure? That doesn't sound right to me."
But both Biden and Trump clinched enough convention delegates on "Super Tuesday" in early March that they have guaranteed wins for the party conventions.
So, like mark k, I suspect we won't really have a current-ish hard data on it because nobody's asking anymore - barring a meteor strike or a medical emergency or an utterly unexpected legal development Biden & Trump are the candidates, so finding out how many people know or believe it is a moot point.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:22 AM on May 25 [5 favorites]
I think there are a lot of people in deep, deep denial, or who can't believe both of those guys make it to November. Honestly, I am very well informed and I have a hard time really wrapping my head around it, that out of all the people in the United States, these are our options. So I think a poll would have a hard time teasing out the difference between "oh, I didn't know!" and "I mean, I know, but I don't know know, y'know?"
posted by potrzebie at 10:19 PM on May 26 [3 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 10:19 PM on May 26 [3 favorites]
The issue here is that some people just completely tune out from politics. Others who see it as their duty to vote, still tune out until more or less that last minute.
And the dynamic is, there are a bunch of primaries all through the later winter and spring and so - if you are not paying pretty close attention to the details of the primaries - the exact moment one when candidate or the other actually goes from "frontrunner" or "probably winner" to "definitely the candidate barring something really unusual happening" is not that apparent unless you are paying quite close attention.
So a lot of people - maybe something like half the electorate - just don't pay much attention to these details. Their basic assumption is that there isn't really a final candidate for each party until the convention happens late in the summer.
If you asked them or pin them down on it they might be able to come up with the correct answer about the two candidates. But the point is more: They are just not paying attention to this at all. They're trying to keep it out of their conscious awareness until the election is quite close.
Even for someone like me who follows this stuff pretty closely, I would be hard pressed to tell you exactly when I realized there was only one viable candidate in each party, and then again when each candidate had won enough primary votes to guarantee at win at the convention, and then when any opposing candidates dropped out, exactly (ie, when Haley made the announcement she was dropping out). Also confusing the issue that that Haley continues to win something like 20% of the vote in ongoing primaries, and pick up delegates - even though she has "officially" dropped out.
So it is a gradual and somewhat complex process, and if your attitude towards such things is "yuck/avoid" then you don't know any of the details and probably have picked up only through osmosis or the occasional random headline that Biden & Trump seem to be headed for a re-match.
In your mind, it's not really official until the announcement at the conventions, and that is when the final race really starts. In the meanwhile, they are probably not even aware exactly which stage of the process we are currently in. They just simply don't care at all about that kind of stuff.
So what percentage of voters this actually applies to is not that certain, but maybe about half. And of the half how many actually don't know vs just haven't actively been seeking out information on the matter, is going to be pretty hard to determine.
So to answer your question: The percentage of voters who actually don't know is certainly half or less. A WAG would be, say, half of the half truly aren't aware - so maybe 25% of voters. If you'd prefer a range, maybe 5-30% of voters.
However I would wager than among the large amount of non-voters or very occasional voters, that percentage is larger.
So in that sense, it is a fairly safe position to take that "the number of U.S. adults who aren't really aware of who the candidates are at this point is large." It's just a generic fact that many adults just don't vote and so never tune into the election much at all, and a large bloc of those who do vote, wait until between the conventions and the elections to figure out what's up and make up their minds.
That is just a lot of theoretical talk, but here is one bit of hard data I was able to track down: Pew Research Center, Feelings about the 2024 race for president dated 24 April 2024.
What they find is that 49% of voters have given a lot of thought to the 2024 candidates. That compares with 51% in the 2020 election.
That leaves 51% of voters (plus as I mentioned before - pretty much ALL of the non-voters) who have given just a little or no thought to the matter.
That doesn't answer your question completely but it does put an upper bound on the percentage of people paying attention vs not paying much or any attention.
posted by flug at 11:55 PM on May 26 [2 favorites]
And the dynamic is, there are a bunch of primaries all through the later winter and spring and so - if you are not paying pretty close attention to the details of the primaries - the exact moment one when candidate or the other actually goes from "frontrunner" or "probably winner" to "definitely the candidate barring something really unusual happening" is not that apparent unless you are paying quite close attention.
So a lot of people - maybe something like half the electorate - just don't pay much attention to these details. Their basic assumption is that there isn't really a final candidate for each party until the convention happens late in the summer.
If you asked them or pin them down on it they might be able to come up with the correct answer about the two candidates. But the point is more: They are just not paying attention to this at all. They're trying to keep it out of their conscious awareness until the election is quite close.
Even for someone like me who follows this stuff pretty closely, I would be hard pressed to tell you exactly when I realized there was only one viable candidate in each party, and then again when each candidate had won enough primary votes to guarantee at win at the convention, and then when any opposing candidates dropped out, exactly (ie, when Haley made the announcement she was dropping out). Also confusing the issue that that Haley continues to win something like 20% of the vote in ongoing primaries, and pick up delegates - even though she has "officially" dropped out.
So it is a gradual and somewhat complex process, and if your attitude towards such things is "yuck/avoid" then you don't know any of the details and probably have picked up only through osmosis or the occasional random headline that Biden & Trump seem to be headed for a re-match.
In your mind, it's not really official until the announcement at the conventions, and that is when the final race really starts. In the meanwhile, they are probably not even aware exactly which stage of the process we are currently in. They just simply don't care at all about that kind of stuff.
So what percentage of voters this actually applies to is not that certain, but maybe about half. And of the half how many actually don't know vs just haven't actively been seeking out information on the matter, is going to be pretty hard to determine.
So to answer your question: The percentage of voters who actually don't know is certainly half or less. A WAG would be, say, half of the half truly aren't aware - so maybe 25% of voters. If you'd prefer a range, maybe 5-30% of voters.
However I would wager than among the large amount of non-voters or very occasional voters, that percentage is larger.
So in that sense, it is a fairly safe position to take that "the number of U.S. adults who aren't really aware of who the candidates are at this point is large." It's just a generic fact that many adults just don't vote and so never tune into the election much at all, and a large bloc of those who do vote, wait until between the conventions and the elections to figure out what's up and make up their minds.
That is just a lot of theoretical talk, but here is one bit of hard data I was able to track down: Pew Research Center, Feelings about the 2024 race for president dated 24 April 2024.
What they find is that 49% of voters have given a lot of thought to the 2024 candidates. That compares with 51% in the 2020 election.
That leaves 51% of voters (plus as I mentioned before - pretty much ALL of the non-voters) who have given just a little or no thought to the matter.
That doesn't answer your question completely but it does put an upper bound on the percentage of people paying attention vs not paying much or any attention.
posted by flug at 11:55 PM on May 26 [2 favorites]
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posted by cupcakeninja at 6:20 AM on May 25