Michael Nigro/Sipa USA via AP Images
A woman wearing a Kennedy ’24 pin listens to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak at the Brooklyn-based The Gentleman’s Factory in honor of Black History Month, February 18, 2024, in New York City.
President Biden and Donald Trump have now each won enough delegates to ensure their respective presidential nominations. Yet we are facing an election in which an unprecedented share of voters desperately wish that the two major parties don’t nominate these leaders.
We’ve had such “dual haters” before. In 2016, when Hillary Clinton faced Donald Trump, they comprised 18 percent of the voters and they played a pivotal role in putting Trump in the White House. They gave Trump an over 20-point margin in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
This year, the “dual haters” are 23 percent of the electorate, and they will not be easy voters for Biden to win. Right now, he is losing them by 8 points in a two-way contest and by 10 in the multicandidate field.
These numbers come from a survey of 2,500 potential voters in battleground states that Democracy Corps and PSG Consulting conducted at the end of 2023, which included 500 over- samples of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians at the end of the year. Our survey used the thermometer scale used by the University of Michigan’s National Election Studies, asking voters to give “warm” and “cool” ratings on a 100-degree thermometer.
The most important finding was the share of these “dual haters” who are potential swing voters. Fully 45 percent are independents; 51 percent are moderates. Only 4 percent are “very conservative.” And a 55 percent majority say they’ll vote for independent candidates, led by Robert F. Kennedy. In a simulated race against Biden, 57 percent said they’d choose Nikki Haley.
This is a group of voters that could break for Biden.
We cheered President Biden’s spirited State of the Union speech, which could reverse the momentum and get this race back to parity. It was a speech that could well have won over some moderate Republicans and Liz Cheney conservatives.
But the president was not yet speaking to the “dual haters,” though he will have many more opportunities to do that in this long campaign.
More from Page S. Gardner | Stanley B. Greenberg
The president started the speech by declaring “the state of our Union is strong and getting stronger”—which probably didn’t ring true for these alienated and angry voters. A daunting 91 percent of such voters say the country is “on the wrong track.” They are looking for a big change; barring that, many would choose not to vote. Only a third chose 10 on the 1-to-10 ladder that measures voter interest, compared to over half of all voters. They are not close news-watchers and might well have skipped a 68-minute speech.
Democrats will have a better chance of winning them if they bring a more accurate view of what they have achieved and how it impacted people. The expanded Child Tax Credit, for example, expired and many reductions in prescription drug prices are anticipated in the future. Working people saw bigger wage gains under Trump; consumer confidence is still 20 points below its level when Biden took office; and by a wide margin, “dual haters” think Trump will help more than Biden in ensuring wages keep up with prices. They give the Republicans a 33-point advantage on “getting things done.”
But Biden can still get ahead with these voters because our survey of the battleground shows he has the potential to get heard on abortion and women’s rights, and on opposition to MAGA Republicans. He can connect with these voters’ fear of autocracy and white supremacists. They liked his joining a picket line and getting billionaires to pay taxes. They wanted to hear more on climate change.
This is just the launch of the 2024 campaign. Past Democratic presidential campaigns have altered their strategy and message and made dramatic gains around the time of the Democratic conventions in August.
Consider the example of two presidential campaigns that co-author Greenberg advised.
In 2000, Al Gore trailed George W. Bush by about 10 points for the entire year before the party conventions. After the Republican convention, Bush’s lead grew to a remarkable 17 points.
At the Democratic convention, though, Gore delivered a powerful pro–working class acceptance speech. That wiped out Bush’s long-held lead. The candidates were tied after Labor Day, and this working-class message and strategy gave Gore a small lead going into the debates at the end of September.
The debates were a disaster, however. They put Bush into the lead, though our polls showed us with a fraction-of-a-point lead on Election Day. (And, of course, Gore did beat Bush in the national popular vote count.)
In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s problems looked very much like those facing Biden today. She had embraced an economic message of “build on the progress.” That assertion of progress, however, clashed with what she was hearing from women voters on her tour at cafés and restaurants. By her own account, “Stan also thought my campaign was too upbeat on the economy, too liberal on immigration, and not vocal enough about trade.”
During this election, Democracy Corps had been conducting intensive surveys for the Roosevelt Institute on the economy and for the Voter Participation Center (VPC), on the sentiments of unmarried women. (VPC was founded by co-author Gardner, who also served as its president at the time of these surveys.)
Clinton was tied with Trump going into the Democratic convention. After years of being relentlessly attacked by the right, nearly two-thirds of voters said she was not “honest and trustworthy,” and only 38 percent said they would be “proud” to have her as president.
In her debates with Trump, though, she sounded a new message. She dismissed Trump’s “trickle-down” tax cuts that would mostly benefit him and his rich friends. She closed with this powerful offer: “That’s what my mission will be in the presidency. I will stand up for families against powerful interests, against corporations. I will do everything that I can to make sure that you have good jobs with rising incomes, that your kids have good educations from preschool through college. I hope you will give me a chance to serve as your president.”
She came out of the debate with a 7-point lead in the race, closing an 11-point gap with Trump on who was best on the economy. She was only losing white working-class women by 4 points.
She would lose these last voters badly, however, after the Russian hack and the FBI report. Nonetheless, she showed that reaching these kinds of voters, even at a late point in the campaign, can change the race dramatically. Both Gore and Clinton showed that key blocs of voters change the outcome of races.
The “dual haters” can play that role in 2024.
But you have to start, we believe, by hearing them on what is their top worry. A stunning 67 percent of the “dual haters” cite “inflation and the cost of living.” That is 22 points higher than the next-mentioned problem. In his State of the Union address, the president chose to be indirect, making no mention of high prices but talking about cutting taxes and lowering drug prices and health care premiums.
We will see whether it works, but we don’t think he can avoid addressing their economic worries more directly.
At some point, President Biden will lament the high prices, feel their pain, and express his anger at the giant companies’ super-profits and how they are not cutting prices or raising wages. Voters suffered through the pandemic while the corporations increased their bottom lines and CEO pay. That might get voters’ heads nodding and listening to Biden again.
And once they are listening, there are so many reasons why these “dual haters” can move to vote for Biden. Then, he can talk to them about his accomplishments, but focusing like a laser on the ones that helped them with the cost of living. These were his achievements that were top-ranked in our survey by the “dual haters”:
- The new law passed by Democrats that capped out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000, reduced insulin to $35 a month, and allows Medicare to negotiate lower prescription prices for the first time.
- Increasing the Child Tax Credit received monthly that provided tax relief for poor, working, and middle-class families with children. It was the biggest tax cut for working families ever and it cut Black child poverty in half.
What makes these voters particularly angry is the contrast between what was happening at the very top with what was happening to them. These voters are very open to worker-centered messages that favor increasing the power of workers at the expense of the biggest corporations and Wall Street. The “dual haters” give labor unions a warm rating.
They give their most intense response to taxing billionaires and “limiting big corporate mergers to reduce monopolies, increase competition, and reduce cost for consumers.”
Biden can win with the economy with “dual haters.”
And abortion is another powerful entry point. Hearing of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade set off a bomb in our survey. We asked survey voters’ gut response to the decision. Two-thirds gave a cool response and over half provided the lowest rating, under 25 degrees on the 100-degree thermometer scale. Indeed, abortion being made illegal is one of the top worries if the Republicans gain control. Biden and the Democrats have a 38-point advantage over Trump and the Republicans on “for women’s rights.”
After you have contested the economy and abortion, you can center your contrast on the MAGA Republicans. The “dual haters” have their most visceral and intense reaction to the phrase “MAGA Republicans.” Three-quarters are cool, with 55 percent giving the most intense response.
Trump and the MAGA Republicans winning creates a lot of fear around:
- America sinking into chaos (44 percent)
- White nationalists and militias gaining power and America facing greater violence and threats to elected leaders (44 percent)
- The president governing as an autocrat without any checks with the Justice Department prosecuting Trump’s opponents (35 percent)
Finally, pundits should not underestimate the importance of climate change to young people, Democrats and, most importantly, “dual haters.” Climate change is the issue that “dual haters” give Biden and the Democrats their strongest advantage (+43 points).
2024 is an election with so many chapters to go. We hope President Biden has reversed the momentum and made gains with his important speech. He will have many opportunities in this long campaign to be heard by the “dual haters” who will decide the race.
