Politics reporter Steve Harrison is out of the office this week. As the normal editor of his newsletter, I figured I’d try to contribute something.
There’s a new poll that may interest you if you crave presidential election analysis that doesn’t involve Hunter Biden or the myriad of growing indictments against former President Donald Trump. It’s not the typical “horse race” poll. No, this poll from the Survey Center on American Life, which is part of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, gauges the preferences of “double doubters.”
Or, as Ruy Teixeria of AEI puts it in his analysis on The Liberal Patriot substack, “double haters.” Since I’m more of a glass-half-empty type of guy, I’ll use the latter term.
"Double haters" are people who dislike both Trump and President Biden. With the country so divided, that’s a key constituency. This bloc represents about one-fifth of voters, according to Teixeria.
Biden has a seven-point lead among the 5,000 "double haters" surveyed who were registered to vote. However, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis beats Biden in this group. Texeria says about 40% of double haters are noncommittal about whether they would vote for Biden or Trump.
“This group, like double haters in general, displays jaundiced attitudes toward both parties in most areas. But there are some notable divergences in these attitudes that indicate considerable vulnerability for Biden and the Democrats,” Texeria writes.
There are a lot of interesting findings about what worries this bloc and their views on a variety of issues, which you can read here. Findings from the full survey include the views of people who aren’t registered to vote, so it’s slightly expanded to 6,000 people.
One caveat: the survey was conducted primarily in April. Of course, a lot has happened since then (a trifecta of Trump indictments and congressional hearings on Hunter Biden’s business dealings, just to scratch the surface).
Then again, a lot of things occurred in politics before this survey that I never thought would happen.
