It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy.

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Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your inbox.

BIDEN’S POLITICAL LIFE DEPENDS ON THESE VOTERS
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews ([link removed])
Correspondent

Last week, we mentioned that President Joe Biden is losing support among America’s youngest voters (aged 18 to 29).

That got us thinking about Biden’s core base of support as we hit the six-months-until-the-election window. And I heard the siren call of polling, finding myself spending hours looking at the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll ([link removed]) .

In the past two Marist polls, there were standout shifts for some key Biden groups.

As a reminder, our usual Here’s the Deal guidance around polls: It’s easy for them to be misused. They’re less like maps and more like compasses. They can indicate wide trends and give a sense of bearing.

With that (and margin of error ([link removed]) ) in mind, here’s what we’re watching.

Suburbanites

Let’s start with a demographic that helped block Hillary Clinton from the White House, but helped Biden win it: suburbanites.

Biden won 54 percent of voters in the ‘burbs in 2020, flipping the group for Democrats from Clinton’s 45 percent.

Now in 2024, there are signs that support from suburban adults is on pause.

In the single month between our March ([link removed]) and April ([link removed]) polls, Biden saw both his approval and favorability ratings among this group drop to less than 50 percent.

A closer look at favorability shows that 52 percent of suburban adults had a favorable impression of Biden in late March. Weeks later, it was just 43 percent. Even considering margins of error ([link removed]) , that’s a fast drop.

Biden is fortunate in that the figures for how people will likely vote if the election were today did not slide by nearly as much. But they did slip. In March, given the choice between Biden, Trump, and independent and Green Party candidates, 50 percent of suburban registered voters chose Biden. In April, it was 47 percent.

That is not enough to be statistically significant. And Biden still is ahead of Donald Trump with suburban voters when they’re asked who they’d support if the election were today. But it is symbolically significant, inching toward that doomed 45 percent mark that Clinton saw in 2016.

Women

While smaller demographics can have outsized influence, the larger the voting block the more impactful their swings.

This brings us to women, who make up slightly more than 50 percent of the population ([link removed]) , per the U.S. Census Bureau. Women have also voted in slightly higher percentages than men ([link removed]) in every presidential election since 1980, per the Center for American Women and Politics.

Simply put, they are one of the largest and most powerful voting groups in the country. And Biden won 55 percent of women voters in 2020.

How is he doing now? Biden leads Trump with this group by 9 points in our latest poll. But there are some areas of concern. Let’s look at Democratic women in particular. Biden needs this group to be his most ardent supporters. The crowd doing the wave in the stands. Or at least sitting in the stands.

But the percentage of Democratic women who say they “strongly approve” of how Biden is doing dropped, from 52 percent in March to 43 percent in April. Of course, Biden is generally popular with this group, but we want to point out an apparent loss of enthusiasm from a group Biden needs to be fervent.

Voters of color

Another core group for Biden in 2020: non-white voters.

The Pew Research Center estimated that Black, Hispanic and Asian voters and those of other races accounted for about four-in-10 of Biden’s votes ([link removed]) in 2020.

But Pew noted a potential weakness for Biden, writing, “Even as Biden held on to a majority of Hispanic voters in 2020, Trump made gains among this group overall.”

Let’s look at how these voters are feeling in our polls.

On favorability, Biden was winning with non-white voters in March. Fifty percent indicated they had a favorable impression of him. By April, that figure had dipped to 45 percent.

That said, 66 percent of people in this group who support Biden said that they are backing the president because they support him, rather than because they oppose Trump.

And they are still planning to vote for him. In our April poll, when asked who among the major party and independent candidates they would support, 47 percent of non-white voters said they are backing Biden, with 34 percent ready to vote for Trump. Eleven percent said they’d vote for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Four percent were undecided and 2 percent would vote for Jill Stein and Cornel West each.

White voters

One more group we want to look at: white voters. This is not a core constituency for Biden. Democrats routinely lose with white voters overall. But the margin for Biden could make or break him.

In our April poll, when asked if the election were today 48 percent of white voters said they’d support Trump, compared to 38 percent who backed Biden. Eleven percent said they’d vote for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. To keep the White House, Biden must either raise his numbers with whites overall to be higher than that or he must raise his numbers with non-white voters. (Or there must be a shift in turnout that favors him.)

We spoke with Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher about this last week. He pointed out that Barack Obama won his 2012 race for president overall with 39 percent of white voters backing him ([link removed]) . And Biden won in 2020 with 41 percent of white voters.

That is the neighborhood Biden wants to be in by November.

“If Biden is coming anywhere close to 43 percent of white voters, the math doesn’t work for Trump,” Belcher said.
More on politics from our coverage:
* Watch: Former Trump employees detail hush money payments ([link removed]) at heart of his trial.
* One Big Question: Outside of court, Trump has been campaigning, and his latest “Gestapo” remarks adds to the long history of making Nazi Germany references. Why is this significant? NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter discuss ([link removed]) .
* A Closer Look: In Oklahoma, undocumented immigrants brace for a new rule that gives law enforcement more authority to arrest them ([link removed]) .
* Perspectives: “You don’t feel like a human,” Brittney Griner describes her life in Russian confinement ([link removed]) .

A GLANCE AT AMERICAN VALUES
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Photo by Bryan Olin Dozier/NurPhoto
By Laura Santhanam, @LauraSanthanam ([link removed])
Health Reporter & Coordinating Producer for Polling

Rising fascism and extremism was the top concern for Americans when it comes to the future of their country.

According to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll ([link removed]) , 3 in 10 U.S. adults saw fascism and extremism as the most concerning issue. That was particularly true among Biden supporters, Democrats and white women who graduated from college.

The prospect of the United States becoming weak alarmed an additional 21 percent of Americans in this latest poll, and a “lack of values” worried 24 percent. Republicans were more likely than Democrats or independents to offer either of those answers.

Thinking about values, 36 percent of U.S. adults said the idea of treating others as they wish to be treated is the most important value they wish to teach the younger generations.

But starkly different reactions to the Golden Rule emerged along partisan lines. This value was prioritized by 46 percent of Democrats, 40 percent of independents and 21 percent of Republicans in this poll. The top value that 34 percent of Republicans want to impart to children is faith in God, something shared by 24 percent of independents and 13 percent of Democrats.

#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Joshua Barajas, @Josh_Barrage ([link removed])
Senior Editor, Digital

In President Donald Trump’s hush money trial, now in its third week ([link removed]) , jurors have heard from a National Enquirer publisher, a former executive assistant and a banker who have provided the building blocks of what prosecutors have described as a criminal scheme ([link removed]) to falsify business records designed to cover up stories that could hurt Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

At the center of the historic case is a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, the adult film actor known as Stormy Daniels, who took the stand Tuesday ([link removed]) . Trump and his team have said the former president wasn’t involved in the payments and argued they weren’t illegal.

In a trial full of recordkeeping details, one number did stand out to us.

A digital data analyst, who extracted data from two iPhones belonging to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, testified that it was “unusual” for one of those devices to have so many stored phone contacts.

Our question: How many contacts did Cohen’s phone have? (We’re playing “The Price Is Right” rules: The person closest to the actual number without going over will win. And please, no Googling for the answer.)

Send your answers to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: Which continent will hold the most elections in 2024?

The answer: Africa ([link removed]) . By The Economist’s count, the continent will hold at least 18 elections this year. The combined population of all the countries holding elections in Africa is roughly 310 million people, with 58 percent eligible to vote ([link removed]) , according to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.

Congratulations to our winners: Brenda Radford and Claudia Deibert!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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