What Nate Silver Doesn't Get About Joe Biden

When pollsters ask better questions, they reveal a far closer race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Nate Silver. Image via Youtube.

by Jeremy Novak

One of the things that Biden detractors are fixated on is the fact he polls poorly on the question of age, mental acuity, and whether he will last a new full term.

Nate Silver is one prominent commentator that has been leading the pack on this, constantly pointing out that Biden’s age is a concern that may drag him down to the point where he can’t win the election. His sources for this are poll results for specific questions about age and mental acuity. But you’d think that, as a data analyst, he might be interested in the disconnect between these specific questions and the overall tightness of the head-to-head polling.

To his credit, Silver’s been consistent for a long time on this, although I’ve always felt that he has defended his cherry-picked poll question to support his biased agenda. I haven’t had too much data to oppose Silver’s viewpoint, but I’ve have my suspicions that the polling was missing something important.

One of the things that has confused me throughout this election analysis cycle is this: if people think that Biden’s incapable of being the president due to age, mental acuity, etc., why is he essentially tied with Trump in the actual choice between the two?

You’d think that if the age/mental competence concern was real and significant, he would be losing by several points at least. In these polls, even a significant number of Democrats have been answering that they think he’s too old, and think he should step down from the candidacy. So why isn’t he down by double digits if this is essentially the consensus view?

Finally, the answer

We finally have an answer, albeit just one answer out of what is likely a complex matrix of explanations. But this is perhaps the most elegantly simple, and therefore most powerful, answer of all.

A new poll of adults conducted by Marist from 7/9-7/10 asks the brilliantly simple question “what is more concerning, age or lies?” Can anyone guess which one wins?

Trump’s lies are obviously more concerning by far than Biden’s age. It seems like this would be an important factor in why Biden is holding his own in head-to-head polls.

Now, we should be clear that this poll doesn’t specify whose lies or age are in question, but I think we can agree that the implications are strong enough that we can assign the lies category to Trump and the age category to Biden. This has been the theme of the election ever since it was clear who the candidates would be back in late 2022. This may not be true for 100% of the respondents to this poll, but I would guess it is at least for 95% of them.

Also, this is a poll of “adults”. Not “registered” or “likely” voters. Take that for what it might be worth. But it’s still data we can use to understand the avalanche of polling that has consistently shown that, somehow, Biden is running neck-and-neck with Trump, while an overwhelming majority of them think he’s too old, lacks sufficient mental acuity, and should step down.

Really, the main news in this poll is that, despite hordes of elite, highly educated professional pundits opining about perceived political Democratic Party failures it’s the first poll to address this discrepancy.

But, wait. There’s more!

Biden was also more favored on issue of character:

This poll confirmed the ubiquitous worries of Biden’s age and mental competence. Even a majority thought that Trump was more mentally capable of being president than Biden. Also, it was reiterated that more people want Joe Biden to drop out of the race than Trump, although Trump had very similar numbers here as well, confirming the sentiment that few people are excited about this rematch.

But this poll has what previous ones have lacked: verification that truth and character matter. A lot, apparently.

So while many pundits, like Silver, are laser focused on the age/mental acuity issue, they are missing the overall point, which is that this is not the only issue to focus on. There are two imperfect candidates with strong reasons for people to vote for and against them.

Age group differences

Something I want to turn your attention to is the difference of the answers among age groups.

I just recently wrote an article examining the recent voting trends of younger and older voters and how these trends might impact the 2024 election (See “The Myth of the Youth Vote Saviors”). The title gives away the basic premise, but it’s still worth a read, and its conclusions are supported by the data in this new Marist poll, which was published after I posted my article.

Below is the “character” question for Biden and Trump broken down by age group.

Here’s the results for Biden:

And here are the results for Trump:

It can clearly be seen that the younger the respondent is, the more they think that Trump has the character to serve as president, and Joe Biden does not. And counter to most of our assumptions about young people, half of them think Trump has the character to serve as president, vs. 44% for Biden. Trump gets a higher character rating than Biden by 18-29-year-olds!

Same thing on mental fitness, except even more pronounced across age groups.

Biden:

Trump:

Interestingly, the age breakdown of the question that was the main subject of this article followed a similar pattern, but the overall affect among all age groups remains that truth matters more than age:

But this does show that, curiously, the young are favoring Trump more than Biden in all of these aspects, which may be different than what most people would think, given that we treat young people as a safe haven for Democratic candidates. And in general, they are, as they voted for Biden by a 24-point margin in 2020.

But, as noted earlier, this was down from a 30-point margin for Hillary Clinton in 2016. They are trending away from Biden and may continue to do so in 2024.

But the older age group has been trending the other way, towards Biden. This poll, and other recent polls as well, have been suggesting that older people, are going to continue this trend. And since older voters are the most reliable and populous voting bloc, this works towards the Democratic candidate’s advantage.

Polls still don’t matter, even if they make more sense now

Regardless of what these polls are currently saying, the bottom line is that polls simply don’t matter as much as we like to think they do. Especially now, at more than three months from the election. Anything can happen, as last week’s assassination attempt shows. And there’s no discernible lessons we can take from them, as they are mostly all over the map in their results.

Although it has been consistent that people lack confidence in Biden’s mental acuity, this may not mean people are not willing to vote for him. Other polls need to ask this question. .

And for all the smart, elite media members out there, it has been a failure of epic proportions that no one thought this was worth exploring further.

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