Support for Biden, Trump, Swift

A recent survey shows differences in the parties' enthusiasm for their nominees, and also the strongly partisan sentiments toward Taylor Swift

Swift: Not appreciated by both parties equally

Grinnell College’s Peter Hanson was kind enough to send me some data from a nationwide March 2024 election survey conducted by his school and Selzer & Company. While the overall lean to the sample was pretty strongly in Trump’s favor — perhaps out of step with many other recent surveys — the cross-tabs are worth digging into here. And they show not only the differing enthusiasm across parties but also some striking partisan leans in the evaluations of various public figures.

I’ll start with some basic breakdowns of presidential candidate choice. This survey was conducted among 1,005 adults across the country between March 11th and 17th. In the overall weighted sample, Republicans comprised 36% of respondents, Democrats 34%, and independents 30%. Among this weighted sample, Donald Trump was beating Joe Biden 45 to 38 percent, with 12 percent saying they’d vote for someone else and five percent saying they weren’t sure. This is a somewhat more Trump-favorable survey result than most, and it might not reflect where the electorate is now, a month later. Nonetheless, this is a high quality sample and Selzer is one of the best pollsters there is. Rather than dwelling on the toplines, I want to get into just what is comprising them.

First, let’s look at ideology. It’s not surprising that conservatives overwhelmingly want Trump and liberals overwhelmingly want Biden. What’s somewhat striking here is the percentages who want “someone else.” 16 percent of liberals say they want someone else, while just 8 percent of conservatives want someone else. That is, liberals are twice as likely as conservatives to say they’re seeking a different candidate than their nominee.

It’s interesting to look at age, as well. As the figure below shows, Trump’s advantage over Biden is actually highest among Gen-Xers. But more interesting, again, is the percent saying they want “someone else.” Among the youngest voters, that percentage is nearly equal to their support for Biden. The percent of those saying they want someone else, as well as the percent undecided, drops as voter age increases. It is plausible to assume from this that as younger voters (a recently pretty Democratic-leaning group) increasingly come to see the options for “someone else” dwindling over the coming months, their support for Biden will increase. But at least for now, they remain highly uncertain.

Finally, a breakdown of the vote by race. Not surprisingly, Trump is winning among whites by about 15 points — pretty similar to his advantage in 2020. Among Blacks in this sample, Biden is winning 64 to 15 — a lopsided lead, to be sure, but far less than he won Blacks by in 2020. Among the Latinx community, Trump is actually ahead, while Biden is leading substantially among Asian Americans.

I am somewhat skeptical of these numbers, especially since the sample sizes for racial subgroups are rather small (80 Black respondents, 125 Latinx, 28 Asian). And while Trump has made up ground among Latinx voters in recent surveys, few have him actually leading among this group.

But overall, this survey is showing us similar trends to what we’ve seen from other surveys: Trump is ahead somewhat thanks in large part to reduced enthusiasm for Biden among some traditionally Democratic subgroups: young voters, Blacks, and Hispanics. These surveys are, of course, a snapshot in time, and don’t tell us about how these numbers will trend over the next several months. It’s certainly conceivable that these traditionally Democratic groups will return to their usual voting patterns, as has been the pattern in past election cycles. But there’s a decided lack of enthusiasm on the Democratic side for their nominee right now (or at least as of March).

Okay, let’s pivot to a look at celebrities. The survey asked respondents to say how favorably they considered various high profile individuals, especially Elon Musk, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Taylor Swift.