Morning Consult: Biden 47, Trump 46

Looks like maybe we’ll get a regular dose of these.

Democrats enter the peak of the campaign season with advantages that make their path to regaining control of the Senate easier for strategists and handicappers to envision alongside a Joe Biden victory, but new polling suggests that even a rout at the top of the ticket is unlikely to result in a filibuster-proof majority for the left in 2021.

Senate Republicans are outperforming their well-funded Democratic rivals in Kentucky and Texas, while the chamber’s most vulnerable Democrat, Doug Jones of Alabama, trails his Republican challenger, former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, by double digits, according to the latest Morning Consult Political Intelligence polling of likely voters in four states conducted from July 24 through Aug. 2. In South Carolina, the data shows a virtually tied contest between Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — one of President Donald Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill — and Jaime Harrison, the former state Democratic Party chairman.

The four states are viewed as reaches for Senate Democrats this year, with handicappers rating them as less competitive than high-profile challenges against incumbent Republicans in places like Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Maine and North Carolina. Democrats need to win four seats held by Republicans, and retain all of their current seats, to take a clean majority, but would need much more to reach the 60-vote threshold that would enable them to push through a policy agenda without changing the chamber’s rules and eliminating the filibuster for legislation.

No Senate candidate is running statistically ahead of his or her party’s presumptive presidential nominee in the four states, mirroring Morning Consult findings from polls in three battleground states — Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina — released last week.

The biggest gap appears in Texas, where Biden and Trump are statistically tied, 47 percent to 46 percent.

MJ Hegar, an unsuccessful 2018 House candidate who recently emerged from a tough Democratic primary, underperforms Biden in the Lone Star State by 9 percentage points, with 38 percent support — 6 points behind Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who roughly matches the president’s vote share in the state with 44 percent support. That gap is driven by independents and Democrats, among each of whom Hager underperforms Biden by double digits.

See here for the previous Morning Consult poll, which had it at Biden 47, Trump 45. In re: the Senate poll, Hegar does a little worse among Dems than Cornyn does among Republicans (81-5 Dems for Hegar, 85-4 GOP for Cornyn), and 27% of the Independent sample is “don’t know”. I would just note that Cornyn is trailing Trump, which in a situation where Trump is in danger of losing the state ain’t so great for him. For what it’s worth, in 2018 I tracked eight polls of the Senate race from the beginning of June through August 2, and the polling average there was Cruz 46.1 and Beto 40.3, basically the same spread as Cornyn-Hegar in this poll. I believe this race is closer than what the public polls suggest, due partly to the closeness of the Presidential race, Cornyn’s inability to run clearly ahead of Trump, and Hegar’s lower profile. I admit, it would be nice to see the polls begin to reflect that belief. As for the Presidential race, the polling average stands at 45.8 for Trump to 45.4 for Biden over all fifteen polls, and 46.0 to 45.6 in favor of Biden for the eleven most recent polls. (The Texas Politics Project has a more comprehensive poll tracker going all the way back to last Feburary, if you’re into that sort of thing.) The next frontier, as noted by NPR, would be Biden getting to or over 50% in a poll of Texas. His high-water mark so far has been 48. But then, so has Trump’s.

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4 Responses to Morning Consult: Biden 47, Trump 46

  1. Pingback: Biden’s team in Texas – Off the Kuff

  2. brad says:

    MTGA moving in the right direction.

  3. Pingback: Hegar to get a boost – Off the Kuff

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