On Politics Poll Watch: The Field Narrows

December 6, 2019

Welcome to Poll Watch from On Politics. Every Friday, we’ll bring you the latest data and analysis to track the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Current state of the race

Arrows show recent changes in value or rank. See more detailed data here.

Continue reading the main story

Who’s up? Who’s down? Here’s the latest.

By Alexander Burns

The good news for Joe Biden: He remains the Democratic front-runner. Elizabeth Warren’s September surge has evaporated and no one else is close to overtaking him. The Democratic field is as fractured as it has been in months.

The bad news for Mr. Biden: He needs it to stay fractured. Mr. Biden is steady in the mid-20s but he has not gained support in the polls since Labor Day. And his numbers are weaker in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The underlying dynamics of the race have not changed all that much since the early summer. Mr. Biden has a solid coalition of older voters, particularly African-Americans and less educated whites, while a majority of the party is divided between his younger or more liberal rivals. One candidate after another has caught a wave of support without ultimately toppling Mr. Biden from his leading position — first Kamala Harris (who dropped out of the race this week), then Ms. Warren, now Pete Buttigieg.

But Mr. Biden’s tenacity is about to be put to its most strenuous test, as the Democratic field narrows abruptly. Ms. Harris’s surprise withdrawal was a powerful concession by a once-prominent candidate that the race has reached a merciless new stage in which fewer candidates have the resources to compete — and Democratic voters will have fewer serious options to consider.

Continue reading the main story

The challenge for Mr. Biden will be to expand his support as voting nears. Locking down a quarter of the party has been enough to make him a leading candidate in a jumbled race with overflowing debate stages. It may not be enough to sustain his position in a race with fewer than half a dozen serious candidates, three of whom have a credible path to victory in most of the early states.

For Ms. Warren, Mr. Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders, the next phase of the race is about gaining an advantage in as many of those leadoff states as possible, to build the kind of momentum that would allow them to dispatch Mr. Biden on Super Tuesday. All three have imposing financial and organizational strengths, but so far they have kept each other in check by dividing up the bulk of Democrats who are not sold on Mr. Biden.

The campaign is now a battle for survival for other candidates, like Cory Booker, who faces elimination from the December debate stage. And looming in the distance is Michael Bloomberg, whose spending has transformed the financial picture of the race but who is not yet registering substantially in national polls.

Drop us a line!

We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We’ll try to answer it. Have a comment? We’re all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

Continue reading the main story

Why Americans are embracing trade

By Giovanni Russonello

A big part of Donald J. Trump’s political identity has centered on his promises to shake up the United States’ role in the world and reject the free-trade agreements that he has called “a disaster” for American workers.

Mr. Trump made those ideals a major part of his presidential campaign in 2016, and he has remained committed to them since, as the events of the past week have shown. He publicly clashed with European leaders during a visit to London, going so far as to threaten a 100 percent tariff on some imports from France. He continues to push Congress to approve a deal that would replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.

And on Tuesday he announced that he may wait until after the 2020 election to negotiate a grand deal with China, signaling that debates over trade could loom over the presidential race.

Trade is not a primary concern for most American voters: Of the seven topics CNN asked about in a recent poll, voters were least likely to cite trade as important for their decision in 2020.

But Mr. Trump’s heterodox approach to diplomacy has become a constant source of headlines, and Americans’ views of his trade policy have become entwined with their anxiety about how he conducts himself abroad.

Nearly three years into his first term, the country now disapproves of the president’s handling of both trade and foreign affairs by a sizable margin: On each topic, Americans are more likely to disapprove than to approve by a gap of 10 to 20 points, depending on which recent poll you’re reading.

When Mr. Trump took office, polls showed that Americans were broadly sympathetic to his calls for a rethinking of trade policy. In January 2017, a Gallup poll found that 71 percent of respondents nationwide said that “promoting favorable trade policies for the U.S. in foreign markets” should be a very important policy goal for the new administration.

Americans have also become much more likely to see trade as a good thing since Mr. Trump took office. A Gallup poll earlier this year found that by a huge margin — 74 percent to 21 percent — Americans now tend to see trade as an “opportunity for economic growth through increased U.S. exports” rather than a “threat to the economy from foreign imports.”

But Lydia Saad, a senior editor at Gallup, resisted equating support for trade with opposition to Mr. Trump’s positions.

“Democrats, I think, hear what Trump says and interpret that as anti-trade, and so reflexively are saying: ‘No, trade is great,’” Ms. Saad said. “Republicans hear what Trump says, and they say, ‘Trump says he’s going to be a better advocate for trade deals and make trade better, so trade is great.’”

Indeed, white Americans without a college degree — who tend to be among Mr. Trump’s most solid supporters — flipped from generally opposing trade to generally supporting it as soon as Mr. Trump was elected.

Mr. Trump is attempting to replace NAFTA with a deal of his own, known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, that includes many provisions that Democrats have long pushed for, including a demand that Mexico raise its minimum wage and a stipulation that cars include a higher percentage of parts made in North America.

But the fact that most Americans remain dissatisfied with Mr. Trump’s conduct abroad still leaves room for an opponent to confront him on trade, experts say.

“Trump took most of their talking points,” Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, said in an interview, referring to Mr. Trump’s protectionist policies.

“If you listen to the Democrats, they’re basically saying, ‘We agree it was time to get tough on China, but the tariffs are the wrong tactic, and we shouldn’t be alienating our allies.’ So it’s much more of a tactical debate than a substantive debate.”

WHAT TO READ TONIGHT