With the Iowa Republican caucus in the books as I write this (Tuesday, January 16, 2024), stuff is starting to get real.

It seems like barring unforeseen major developments, we are headed for another Biden vs. Trump election. In the absence of any other information, I would just say look at what happened last time. Biden won pretty handily, and really nothing major has changed in any rational sense, except that there hasn’t been a recession, war, or pandemic (that has affected the vast majority of the U.S. public significantly). What there has been is inflation, and not just inflation but inflation following a long period of no inflation in many voters’ living memories. And that seems to me to be the one thing making the difference for Biden. There is just nothing else that makes sense to me.

Anyway, tiresome as it gets, we know it comes down to the “battleground states”. There were three states in 2020 with a voting margin of less than 1% (Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin), two within 1-2% (North Carolina and Pennsylvania), and two within 2-3% (Michigan and Nevada). That’s it – no, Florida and Ohio were not close. 7 states that matter out of 50 and some territories. I got these numbers from CNN.

Sure, it’s early to start looking at state-level general election polls. Sure, there are all sorts of problems with polls. Sure, other candidates could theoretically be nominated. Sure, third party candidates could affect the race. But the numbers below are at least averages of several polls over a period of time which might smooth out at least some biases, and they paint a consistent and deeply worrying picture for Biden at this stage.

I’ll try to update this from time to time. If I were much smarter, I would try to automate it. Well, I would like to think I am smart enough to figure that out, but it is just not close to the top of my project list.