DON’T GET COCKY: Joe Biden is facing a near-historic deficit for an incumbent.

Take a look at recent national surveys from CBS News/YouGov, CNN/SSRS, Fox News, Marquette University Law School and Quinnipiac University. All five are high-quality polls that meet CNN standards for publication.

All five give Trump an advantage of 2 to 4 points over Biden among registered or likely voters. On their own, none of these data points mean too much. Trump’s lead in all of them is within the margin of error. Averaged together, though, they paint a picture of an incumbent with a real problem.

Over the past 80 years, incumbents have, on average, led their eventual challengers by a little more than 10 points about a year out from the election. This includes nearly every incumbent for whom we have polling since Franklin Roosevelt in 1943.

It includes Barack Obama against Mitt Romney in November 2011. This is notable because a number of Democrats have tried to dismiss the current data showing Biden in trouble by saying that Obama had been behind at this point, too. That simply isn’t true.

And this from Maureen Dowd:

According to a New York Times/Siena College poll, Donald Trump is ahead in five battleground states and, as some other surveys have found, is even making inroads among Black voters and young voters. There’s a generational fracture in the Democratic Party over the Israeli-Hamas horror and Biden’s age. Third-party spoilers are circling.

The president turns 81 on Monday; the Oval hollows out its occupants quickly, and Biden is dealing with two world-shattering wars, chaos at the border, a riven party and a roiling country.

“I think he has a 50-50 shot here, but no better than that, maybe a little worse,” Axelrod said. “He thinks he can cheat nature here and it’s really risky. They’ve got a real problem if they’re counting on Trump to win it for them. I remember Hillary doing that, too.”

The president’s flash of anger indicates that he may be in denial, surrounded by enablers who are sugarcoating a grim political forecast.

Biden has always lashed out, always punched down. Even if he isn’t surrounded by enablers, he doesn’t have the strength of character to listen to honest criticism.

DON’T GET COCKY: Shock Poll Shows That Even California Hates Biden and Newsom Running the State Into the Ground.

DON’T GET COCKY, KIDS: Don Surber: 3 reasons why Trump is leading. The first two don’t count because it is the mugshot, stupid. “The prosecutions are numerous and unfair in a manner that crosses party lines.”

DON’T GET COCKY: Even James Carville Admits Biden Has A ‘Big F***ing’ Polling Problem.

DON’T GET COCKY: Trump Leads Biden by Nine Points in New Washington Post/ABC News Poll.

But it’s not as if the last couple of years have made a good case for a second Biden term, especially compared with the state of the nation during Trump’s four years.

UPDATE (From Ed):

WaPo/@ABC poll has Trump leading Biden, 51%-42%. Uh-huh.
Useful to remember that poll in late October 2020 had Biden winning WI by 17 points; he carried the state by less than a point#pollfail

Troubles for Biden not just his age in reelection campaign: https://t.co/WClxnNMXjj

— W. Joseph Campbell (@wjosephcampbell) September 24, 2023

DON’T GET COCKY: How The Unhinged Left will Elect Trump in 2024.

DON’T GET COCKY:

Here's the map with the Reuters poll numbers today

Now you know why Dems are hitting the panic button about Biden pic.twitter.com/R7yp9Jvcnt

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 15, 2023

DON’T GET COCKY: Shock: America turns right, conservatives top liberals 40%-26%.

DON’T GET COCKY: Yikes! Biden Is at 60 Percent Against Kennedy and Williamson in the New CNN Poll. “Kennedy was at 21 percent in the Emerson poll in late April, but that poll had Biden at 70 percent. That’s in the neighborhood of Pat Buchanan’s finish against George H.W. Bush in 1992.”

DON’T GET COCKY: ‘Full-Throated F-cking Panic’: Yet Another Report Details How Dems Are Privately Fretting About Biden’s Reelection Chances.

WELL. DON’T GET COCKY. Whoa: FiveThirtyEight projection in PA Senate race dramatically shifts to Oz — and GOP overall.

DON’T GET COCKY: White House Report Card: At the end, Zogby says GOP ‘has a clear advantage.’

THREAD ON EARLY VOTING IN PHILLY:

Read the whole thing — and don’t get cocky.

DON’T GET COCKY: Stunner for Democrats Drops in New Hampshire and Scrambles the Election Map.

Hold on a second. Is New Hampshire actually in play for Republicans on November 8th? That’s the story from a stunning new poll that shows that Don Bolduc is leading Democrat incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan.

Bolduc, a Donald Trump-endorsed candidate, was left for dead after winning the primary, with the assumption being that his negatives were too high and that he couldn’t draw support in a blue state. His fundraising was lackluster, and the national groups have been spending their finite resources in more “competitive” states.

Recently, though, it was revealed that Republicans were going back into New Hampshire to make last-minute ad buys for Bolduc, again putting the race on the table. That surprised a lot of election onlookers, but this new poll from St. Anselm says it’s the right move.

There will be surprises on election night, but it sure feels like most of the surprises will be unpleasant ones for the Democrats.

DON’T GET COCKY: A Stunning Number of Americans Believe the Country Is ‘Out of Control’ Thanks to Democrats.

As Glenn likes to say, “Seriously, if you care about this election, you need to be out volunteering and donating. Commenting on the Internet doesn’t count.”

DON’T GET COCKY: Lefty Washington State Is Now ‘Ground Zero for Wave Election Upset’ in Senate Race.

DON’T GET COCKY: Rick Scott Predicts GOP Will Win at Least 52 Senate Seats in Midterms.

DON’T GET COCKY: Democrats Already Blaming Voters for Midterm Loss. ‘I cannot believe anybody would vote for these people.’

DON’T GET COCKY: Black Voters Are Shifting Right and the Left Is Losing It.

Let’s start with the insulting. MSNBC host Tiffany Cross slammed the Republican National Committee’s slate of “diverse” Republican congressional candidates, saying “faces of color do not always equate to voices of color.” She then tokenized minority Republicans, including those currently serving in Congress such as Senators Ted Cruz, Tim Scott, and Marco Rubio, and Representatives Byron Donalds, Mayra Flores, Nicole Malliotakis, Burgess Owens, and others, adding that they are “the political equivalent of ‘some of my best friends are Black.'”

Liberal elites often dismiss conservative minority candidates to avoid real debate. Hosts like Cross, elected officials, and political pundits don’t want minority voters to know that there are good reasons to consider non-liberal candidates, especially those of the same race. It undercuts the narrative that Democrats are the party of inclusivity. Increasingly, the criticism that Republicans don’t reach out to communities of color is proving as false as the belief that conservative values don’t resonate with minorities.

If Democrats were the party of inclusivity, they wouldn’t require minorities to toe the line on ideological purity.

DON’T GET COCKY: Throw in the towel. Kari Lake up by 11 in Arizona.

There’s almost definitely something odd going on in the Grand Canyon State and recent surveys suggest that there may be more ticket-splitting than usual coming our way on November 8th. Just this week, the Arizona Senate race moved into a tie, with Real Clear Politics shifting the election from “leans Democrat” to a tossup. But at the very same time, the gubernatorial fight is shaping up to be a blowout unless there is a huge shift in momentum at the eleventh hour. A FOX 10 InsiderAdvantage poll conducted this week gives Republican Kari Lake an eleven-point lead over her debate-adverse Democratic rival, Katie Hobbs. To put it mildly, Democrats are going into full-blown panic mode and scrambling to prevent a potential red wave from turning into a crimson tsunami. (Fox 10 Phoenix)

A new FOX 10 InsiderAdvantage poll shows the race for Governor – widening a bit. But the race for U.S. Senate is turning into a dead heat.

With less than 2 weeks to go before the November election, Republican Kari Lake leads Democrat Katie Hobbs by 11 percentage points. Only about 2% of voters are undecided. Pollster Matt Towery believes that Hobbs’ reluctance to debate Lake may be a reason why the gap has widened in recent weeks. According to InsiderAdvantage, Lake is polling higher among older adults and Hispanics.

I don’t want to jinx anyone by calling any closely contested race a “done deal” with more than a week left to go and Lake clearly can’t afford to take her foot off the gas at this stage. But that same poll showed the race being far closer only a month ago and even favored Hobbs to win earlier in the summer. All of the momentum in the later stages of the battle has been in Lake’s corner.

If Lake is actually drawing those numbers, it could also propel Blake Masters across the finish line: Leftist Think Tank’s Poll: Blake Masters and Mark Kelly Are Tied.

As Glenn likes to say though about eschewing the cockiness, “Seriously, if you care about this election, you need to be out volunteering and donating. Commenting on the Internet doesn’t count.”

DON’T GET COCKY: Leftist Think Tank’s Poll: Blake Masters and Mark Kelly Are Tied.

DON’T GET COCKY: With memories of embarrassments still fresh, election pollsters face big tests in 2022 midterm elections.

DON’T GET COCKY: I’d Definitely Panic Now if I Were a Democrat. “According to new polls released Friday, two gubernatorial races are now within the margin of error, suggesting that GOP momentum in the last weeks of the midterm elections could propel even more Republicans to victory than previously thought.”

DON’T GET COCKY: Betting Markets Have Flipped to GOP Control of the Senate. After two months of bettors favoring the Democrats to retain control of the Senate, the markets flipped this week, and bettors now give Republicans a better than 60 percent chance of taking the Senate. Five Thirty Eight’s model still favors the Democrats (it gives them a 58 percent chance to retain Senate control), but Nate Silver says he personally considers it a toss-up.

DON’T GET COCKY:  Has The Democrat Dam Holding Back The Red Wave Finally Broken?