Is Biden’s slump dooming Democratic chances in 2024?

ANALYSIS – During this week’s back and forth about the future of the Biden nomination, California Congressman Mark Takano cited low Biden polling in his Inland Empire district as a reason for Democrats to find an alternative presidential nominee for November.

In 2020 Biden won the Takano district by 26-points. And if Biden is losing this seat, one could presume he is also losing in other blue-to-purple districts such as Pete Aguilar’s CA 33 (+25-pt Biden), Jim Costa’s CA 21 (+20-pt Biden), Julia Brownley’s CA 26(+20-pt Biden), Ami Bera’s CA 6 (+18-pt Biden), Raul Ruiz’ CA 25 (+15-pt Biden), Josh Harder’s CA 9 (+13-pt Biden), Mike Levin’s CA 47 (+11-pt Biden), and the open seat, currently held by Katie Porter, CA 9 (+11-pt Biden).

Democrats first won the Harder seat in 2006 when Jerry McNerney defeated Richard Pombo (R) in the only CA Congressional District to switch parties that entire decade. The Brownley and Ruiz seats turned blue in 2012, and Aguilar won his seat in 2014, largely as a function of the 2010 redistricting, with remainder being Democratic pickups caused by the 2018 blue wave. Any suggestion that Biden could be behind in districts like theirs is likely to cause these incumbent Democrats to run to their pollsters for their own temperature check.

A significant drop in Biden polling would also put the presumptive Democratic nominee underwater in the seats Democrats are targeting in 2024 – those which they won in the blue wave of 2018 but were unable to hang on to in subsequent elections – David Valadao’s CA 22 (+13-pt Biden), Mike Garcia’s CA 27 (+12-pt Biden) , John Duarte’s CA 13 (+11-pt Biden), Michelle Steel’s CA 45 (+6-pt Biden) and Young Kim’s CA 40 (+2-pt Biden).

While using the Takano poll as a benchmark could be causing California members of congress, and Democratic nominees, some considerable headaches, this poll may not be a perfect benchmark.

For starters, we don’t know if this poll questioned voters on a heads-up contest between Biden and Trump, or if it included other qualified candidates on the presidential ballot in California, namely Robert Kennedy Jr. and Jill Stein who both are picking up remnants of previous Biden supporters who are not backing him this election cycle. This polling result is vastly different if it is a 55% Trump, 45% Biden result, or if it is a 41% Trump, 44% Biden, 12% Kennedy, 3% Stein result.  In the latter case, Biden could be losing support to third-party candidates – and most of those votes would be given to the Democratic candidates for congress and the legislature.

While using the Takano poll as a benchmark could be causing California members of congress, and Democratic nominees, some considerable headaches, this poll may not be a perfect benchmark.

Additionally, we have seen striking national polling showing that US Senate candidates nationally are over-performing Trump. So, even if Takano and the whole field of incumbent Democrats in potential swing seats are residing in districts that are leaning Trump, they could still be strongly outperforming their own Republican opponents.

And, finally, don’t discount a potential “boomerang” effect for some Democrats in close districts if Trump is seen as the most likely winner, with Republicans likely to take the majority in the US Senate and gain dozens of seats in the House come November.

As we saw in 2016, there was a significant overperformance for Republican candidates in districts where their voters were concerned about Hillary Clinton being president, with unchecked power from a Democratic Congress.  In Darrell Issa’s CA 49, a significant number of voters cast ballots for Issa even though they likely would not have voted for him if they thought Trump was going to be president.  Just two years later, Issa retired from Congress because that same seat was going to be unwinnable for him in the 2018 midterms.

With this kind of boomerang we could see some districts, particularly those in higher educated areas like Orange County and San Diego, voting for Trump, but also electing Democrats to Congress, in part to check former President Trump in any second term. This may not be in play in Central Valley districts, or lower income areas of the state, but likely is just limited to where high income, highly educated ticket-splitters live.

This doesn’t mean that Democrats will be in a position to win the House in a Trump victory – the macro-trends of more engaged Republicans, and despondent Democrats, particularly with cratering turnout from younger voters, would likely mean that Republican gains across the ballot. But, on the margin, congressional members like Takano should be able to withstand the hit, even in a Trump year.