Split Ticket

Joe Biden’s abysmal showing in Thursday’s debate may well have been at the very top of the “worst case scenario” list for his campaign. It has sparked a firestorm of speculation regarding the viability of his candidacy and whether he should remain in the race, especially given his age and the broad concerns voters have harbored about it for the last several years.

I think it’s easy to get caught up in the media firestorm regarding the debate, especially considering that the vast majority of visible movement has actually not come from voters; it’s come from party elites and media figures, many of whom were very wary of Biden’s ability to wage an effective campaign and now feel freed (or alarmed) enough to speak out.

I don’t think there are any clear answers regarding what Biden should do, however. Each option has upsides, but each is also fraught with risk. It’s worth trying to break down the cases for and against each path.

The Case For Joe Biden

Biden is obviously unpopular, and a major factor behind this is his age. At the age of 81, he is the oldest person to ever hold or seek the office of either president or vice-president. Poll after poll suggests that a large chunk of voters believe that he may lack the physical and mental capacity to hold office, and believe that he is largely not up to the job.

The key here is that they’ve already believed this, and they’ve believed it for quite some time. In February, 35% of registered voters believed that Biden had the mental and cognitive ability to serve as president. After the debate on June 27, that number dropped to 27%.

That’s a non-trivial amount of movement, of course, but it’s actually largely driven by Democrats, who will likely vote for Biden in November, through sickness and health. In February, 69% of registered Democrats believed Biden was still fit to serve as president. In June, that number dropped to 59%. By contrast, while just 20% of independents currently believe Biden is fit enough, that number was only 26% in February, meaning that this group has moved by less than the nation has, post-debate.

Again, this suggests that the impact on voters is fairly muted, because the average voter already believes Biden is severely diminished. Importantly, this also means that the debate changed far fewer minds than what you might have believed by looking at the New York Times, whose editorial board just came out with a scathing op-ed calling for Biden to bow out of the race.

Poll toplines also provide a mixed picture regarding the impact of the debate; two reputable pollsters (SurveyUSA and Morning Consult) show Biden gaining ground from their last survey, while two others (Data For Progress and Leger) show Biden losing ground. On average, this has resulted in Biden losing a point of ground in the FiveThirtyEight polling averages.

That’s not nearly enough to sound the death knell for a candidate or campaign. It usually can be (and often is) easily recovered as the election nears, especially given that most voters have already priced in this possibility and didn’t have their minds changed by the debate. Biden is, in essence, a blank space for people that dislike Donald Trump, and voters have believed this for quite some time now. Against a candidate like Nikki Haley, that might not have been enough. Against Donald Trump, it might very well be.

Given all of the above, why has elite consensus soured on Biden so rapidly? I think the answer to this is simple: the vast majority of elites are already voting for the Democratic candidate. They believed Biden was in better shape than he currently is, and were blindsided by his debate performance. They’re also extremely worried about Biden’s ability to wage a vigorous campaign, which they believe is needed to defeat Donald Trump. The combination of these two factors has resulted in the floodgates opening against the incumbent president.

I think there’s merit to both of those sentiments. But it’s important to remember that a large part of their sentiment is driven by what they believe would win independents and Trump voters. Radio hosts, TV anchors, politicians, activists, and media columnists are perhaps the least representative group of the electorate that you can find, and they usually don’t have nearly as good of a notion of what actually appeals to the median voter.

Biden’s biggest advantage at this point might be that voters have already baked his age into their calculus, and that he can’t lose any more ground than he already has. This was the worst case scenario for him, and it still hasn’t changed too many minds. At the moment, he’s still got a very good shot of defeating Donald Trump, and could conceivably make more gains if he can weather this news cycle, especially as more of Trump’s weaknesses get highlighted and voters tune in as election day draws nearer.

In any case, the most likely, and only viable,  alternative to Biden is Kamala Harris, and she doesn’t currently poll any better than Biden does.

The Case Against Joe Biden

It’s not about where Biden is right now. Most national polls that test any other Democrat against Trump show that they usually trail or lead Trump by the same amount as Biden does. It’s about the gains that they can make that Biden may not be able to.

Poll after poll suggests that Biden’s biggest weakness is among core Democratic constituencies, such as young and nonwhite voters. Nobody credible can say that Trump is likely to win black or young voters outright, but it’s exceedingly clear that Biden is struggling to recreate these parts of his 2020 coalition in terms of both margin and turnout alike, and he would almost certainly lose ground (especially in terms of net votes) among these voters.

That could pose a significant challenge for Biden, and while his relative strength with white voters has helped him stem the bleeding to some degree, polls suggest that his troubles with core Democratic constituencies are so acute that they’re now costing him significant ground.

This is where the importance of a campaign comes in. Engaging these voters and clawing back ground that Democrats have lost will require a serious and sustained effort, and Biden faces two challenges on this front: firstly, it’s not clear that even a vigorous campaign from Biden can even claw those voters back, if they are truly disaffected enough with Biden. Secondly, even if it could, it’s not clear that he will physically be capable of doing this — candidates don’t get any younger with time, and Biden’s continued candidacy is likely to yield more “senior moments”.

Kamala Harris is Biden’s most likely replacement, and she has some upside that Biden simply does not. A Data For Progress poll found Harris’ net favorable rating to be better than Biden’s. This is driven by her outperforming Biden with women, Latino voters, and young voters alike. These are constituencies that soured on the president long ago, but retain an affinity for the party and its candidates; polls of key Senate races consistently show other Democrats doing far better than Biden does with these base voters.

That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise; an 81-year-old white man is perhaps the worst possible candidate to engage young voters, or to highlight and elevate issues like abortion rights. But it does mean that Harris is significantly more likely to do better than Biden does with the key Democratic constituencies that still haven’t fully come around on Biden. That might make her a bit more likely to do better in the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Georgia.

Harris’ performance with white voters remains dicey. Polls currently suggest that she does marginally worse than Biden does with them. But if she can raise the salience of topics like abortion rights in the Midwest, it could help her make some serious gains with moderates and claw back any lost ground there with a strong campaign. Given Trump’s unique weaknesses and overall unpopularity, Harris and a good vice-presidential pick could serve as a fairly effective antidote for the electorate, and could better frame the election as a “choice” between Trump and an alternative. That’s not likely to happen with a potentially toxic Biden at the helm of the ticket, and it could make the gamble worth taking.

As a final point, the age penalty is a very well-observed phenomenon. The electorate generally punishes candidates that it feels are too old, regardless of party — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd and Chuck Grassley are some examples of politicians that had their weakest re-election performances in their final race, by which point their decline from their prime became obvious. Quantitative studies, like those done by Noah Rudnick, show age as having an effect as well.

The reasoning behind this effect is obvious: voters generally do not like voting for candidates whose fitness they question. And they very much question Biden’s — that’s a large part of the reason he’s in this position to begin with.

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In the interests of transparency, I’m personally a Democrat (though I try to never let this get in the way of providing nonpartisan analysis), and my slight preference is for Biden to leave the race in favor of Harris. But both potential outcomes here come with a wide variety of risks, and there’s no guarantee that one works better than the other.

It’s entirely possible that Biden’s exit does nothing to solve the Democratic polling woes against Trump, and that Harris’ own weaknesses are even more problematic, especially among white voters. But it’s also possible that Biden continues to suffer more age-related effects as the election nears, which continuously cripple Democratic campaigns and introduce more negative news cycles that detract from the effort to fend off Donald Trump again.

In any case, if there were any easy solutions to this, I suspect we would have arrived at them by now.