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Saturday night, while most of the world (or at least 16 million people) were watching Coach K's final game as head coach of the Duke Men's Basketball Team, I was at a dinner getting a song stuck in my head.
This year, the very-very-old (like, 1885 old) Washington tradition of the Gridiron Club Dinner was back after a COVID-era hiatus, and I was lucky enough to get to go. Unlike most of these dinners which are relatively serious affairs and involve handing out awards and such, the Gridiron is known as a dinner that is run by a selective club of journalists, is extra fancy (white tie only!) and also extra....extra? Club members and a few talented ringers perform musical numbers making fun of the media and politicians, sometimes including those present. The dinner is not recorded or photographed, but is ostensibly "on the record." The motto is that the evening is supposed to "singe, not burn."
I'm a musical theatre kid who still dreams of one day getting to play Sarah Brown in a production of Guys and Dolls, so I was amused at things like the Gridiron's rendition of "Sit Down, You're Rocking The Boat" rewritten to be about the saga of Liz Cheney. There was a very funny cover of Hamilton's "You'll Be Back" but instead of King George it was Donald Trump singing about how much he knows the press corps misses him and how he'll be back in the White House soon. (Read on for the polling that suggests this is not a crazy notion!)
But the one that is still haunting me was an Encanto homage, taking the chart-topping "We Don't Talk About Bruno" and making it all about the White House's very, very bad poll numbers.
We don't talk about polls, no, no, no.
It was like Codebook meets Lin-Manuel Miranda. I recognize there is an extremely small number of people who fit into the center of this particular Venn diagram (people who enjoy showtunes and song parodies X people who think too much about political polling), but...here we are.
On to the polls, because we DO talk about polls around here.
The current Real Clear Politics averages for the President's job approval are:
Overall job approval: 41.0% approve (down 0.2 points from last week)
Economic job approval: 37.1% approve (down 0.7 points from last week)
COVID-19 job approval: 49.9% approve (down 0.5 points from last week)
Not a ton of movement on any of these figures in the last week or so. The biggest poll to come out recently was the Quinnipiac poll which dropped early last week and include a wide range of grisly datapoints for Democrats. Things still look grim and aren't moving much of anywhere. Inflation remains the very top issue, and on gas prices (as I noted in my Friday column), a plurality of voters lay blame at Biden's feet.
Even on the Ukraine situation, only 44 percent approve of Biden's handling the of things. And when asked if Biden is demonstrating "strong leadership" in his dealings with NATO in regard to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, only 40 percent say yes, while 51 percent say no.
This is, among other things, how you wind up with an unidentified reporter on stage pretending to be Ron Klain singing "we don't talk about polls, no, no, no."
Because Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight calculate their "generic ballot" in different ways, with 538 adjusting polls based on past observed skew, I'll include each here each week for context:
RCP: Republicans +3.6 (GOP advantage up .5 from one week ago)
538: Republicans +2.1 (GOP advantage steady from one week ago)
Republicans remain buoyed in the averages by the poll from Harvard-Harris, which pushes all of the undecideds and finds Republicans up 53-47. Of course, not all undecideds will wind up voting, and usually a small handful of voters do wind up going for a third party candidate here and there. But generally the news remains reasonably good for the GOP in the polls.
Where the news is less good for the GOP remains redistricting. The FiveThirtyEight analysis of redistricting suggests that, contrary to the popular wisdom, Republicans have actually lost a net of six GOP-leaning seats. There are also five fewer "highly competitive" seats nowadays. And there are also a variety of states where court challenges mean Republican-leaning maps might get the boot. (Meanwhile, Democratic maps don't seem to be facing as much pressure from courts.)
Advantage remains firmly Republican for 2022 overall, but that's purely on the basis of the political environment at the moment, not any structural changes or maps.
That Harvard-Harris poll I mentioned earlier? The one with Republicans +6 on the generic ballot for Congress? It has a hypothetical 2024 Trump vs. Biden rematch at - you guessed it - Trump +6.
*big eyes emoji*
While that's definitely the most eye-popping Trump margin of late, it is hardly alone in showing Trump in a stronger position than he was in 2020. Emerson has him +3 and Wall Street Journal had Trump and Biden tied.
The other thing to keep in mind?
Harvard-Harris has Trump +11 in a hypothetical matchup against VP Kamala Harris.
*big eyes emoji again*
Democratic strategist David Shor has noted that he believes the "modal outcome for 2024" is not just Trump being ushered back into the White House, but with big majorities. (As a result, he'd like you to come work with him!)
Here's how this week's COVID-19 picture looks, via The New York Times.
COVID-19 7-day new case average: 27,088 (14 day change of -9%).
COVID-19 7-day hospitalizations average: 15,949 (14 day change of -28%).
It seems as though the COVID-19 situation has leveled off. While overall case rates are still not as low as they were during early Summer 2021, they're still slowly creeping in that direction. The data do also show a bigger drop in I.C.U. hospitalizations and deaths. It's not over, but for the moment, we aren't Shanghai.
Here's how this week's economic picture looks.
AAA's National Average Price of a Gallon of Gas: $4.19 (down six cents from last week)
Unemployment (Mar 2022): 3.6%
Inflation (Feb 2022): 7.9% year over year (March data comes out April 12)
We are due for an update on the inflation data soon, but last week's jobs report was summarized by CNBC as featuring both lower unemployment than expected but also lower numbers for new jobs added than expected.
I'll just say two things: First, I had dinner last week with one of my favorite economist friends who is usually relatively chipper about things like social mobility and the American Dream and so on, and his take on where the economy is headed made me actively lose sleep and want to stock up on canned goods and gold bars.
But second, even if you actually are chipper about the economy, voters aren't feeling it. Sam Stein and Max Tani at POLITICO note:
Reminder: Navigator Research is a Democratic polling collective (which includes Dear Codebook Friend Margie Omero) so this isn't exactly Republican messaging data showing voters think things are lackluster.
Of course, voters' perceptions of the economy are what matters most in politics. Telling someone that the economy is actually awesome and they're just wrong is...well, if that's going to be Democrats' message, I suppose they're welcome to try it!
(As my colleague Patrick put it, "other than that, how was the play, Ms. Lincoln?")
But politicians wringing their hands over the fact that the public just doesn't understand how good they have it, or being upset that voters aren't giving them credit for something...well...that's just how things work. And not to get too partisan about it, but this tweet from Noted Scooter Enthusiast Logan Dobson sums it up:
If voters don't feel it, at least when it comes to the politics of the economy, everything else is somewhat secondary.
Stay tuned on Wednesday, I've got a new polling collaboration with Margie Omero, Celinda Lake and Christine Matthews coming out. It's a research project for AARP doing a deep-dive on voters (especially women) aged 50+ and the role they'll play in the midterms.
I'm extremely fascinated by this Derek Thompson piece at The Atlantic about the way that the switch to remote work has led to a new 9 p.m.-ish chunk of work time for many workers, driven in part by "meeting creep" and people pushing non-extremely-time-sensitive tasks into after work hours. (Derek, if you're reading this, I'd love to get you on the radio show to talk about it - call me!)
French elections are coming up. I know this not because I am a great student of global democracy (though I do love a good overseas election!) but because France has had a remarkably steady elections cadence for a parliamentary democracy, and they have them every five years. When I was in Nice on my honeymoon about ten years ago, there were Hollande and Sarkozy posters up everywhere, each man's portrait set against a serene blue backdrop (see the photo in this article here). Then, on my fifth wedding anniversary, we were in the thick of Le Pen vs. Macron. So now with my tenth anniversary coming up...I know France is due! And this Elizabeth Zerofsky NYT Mag piece on France's right-wing parties, particularly the journey of Marion Maréchal (Marine Le Pen's niece), is worth your time as their election approaches.
(Cover photo credit: The Denver Post Archives/Getty Images, photo is from a 1967 Gridiron-type event for Colorado journalists)
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