Biden's Missing Post-SOTU Bump

Hey everybody, did Biden get a post State of the Union bump? What's happening in Georgia and why on earth is Ken Buck resigning? Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com. Become a member today at members.charliekirk.com. That is members.charliekirk.com. As always, you can email us your thoughts freedom at charliekirk.com. That is freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to our podcast.

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Tom, thank you for taking the time. Tom, my first question is, did we see a State of the Union polling bump for Joe Biden? No, not yet. And again, we have in our average, we've got eight or nine polls and only three or four of those have been taken fully after the State of the Union. But the ones that have been so far, when you look at both the general election head to head numbers between Trump and Biden, but also the ones that judge Biden's job approval rating, not much there. In fact, in the head to head numbers, he's actually gotten worse. Trump's lead has actually grown in these last polls. If you compare, if you take a look at the polls and so make them apples to apples comparison, he's actually lost a little ground.

So, no bumping. Look, that's not terribly surprising in an environment where we're as politicized as we have been. I don't know that Donald Trump got a ton of bumps out of the State of the Unions these days. They don't move the needle like they used to, but certainly it's not good news for Biden that in some cases he's actually gone backwards. So, Tom, just from an analytical perspective, what did you make of his approach, his tone, obviously more towards the Democrat base?

Just kind of riff on what did you make of that? I found it interesting, telling and illuminating that he didn't take a persuasive approach nearly at all. And look, this has been, I think, his strategy from the beginning, and it's only gotten worse over time. I mean, he's gotten himself into a position now, Biden has, where he's so dependent on activating the progressive left wing of his base that it's really hard for him to go to the middle on any of these issues.

I mean, you think about abortion, you think about immigration, to do anything that, he's taken some steps in that direction, but for every step he takes in that direction, he really does sort of lose some folks from the left. And this is going to be an election where, and you see this in the numbers, Republicans have a pretty sizable enthusiasm advantage, and Trump supporters are, there's a poll out, the Suffolk, USA Today, Suffolk poll just out from this morning, Trump's voters are much more committed to voting for him than voting against Biden. Biden's voters are almost evenly split.

A lot of them, 40%, say that they're, the reason they're voting for Biden is not because they like Joe Biden, it's because they want to vote against President Trump. So he can't afford to really lose anybody. He's really got to keep his base activated.

And I think that's what you saw from him last week. So kind of going off of that, how serious is this uncommitted movement against Biden? Do you think that's going to manifest? It seems as if everything he's trying to do is trying to shore up the base leakage that he is experiencing.

Yeah, I agree. It's a problem, particularly in a place like Michigan, where you saw the Palestinian American community, the mayor of Dearborn, Rashida Tlaib, organize this protest vote that got more than 100,000, closer to 150,000 votes in that primary. It's happening in some of these other states, not to the same degree. So obviously those are not people who are going to turn around and vote for Donald Trump in November, but how many of them are going to stay home? Is it 5%?

Is it 10%? And in a state that could be decided by 10, 15, 20,000 votes, it's obviously a concern. And so they have to be worried about that. On the other hand, I think the more legitimate or the bigger concern, if you will, for Biden is a third party candidacy. You've got RFK Jr. making the ballot in places like Arizona and Georgia. And when you add extra candidates to the mix, you get to a three-way race, a five-way race, Trump's lead actually grows bigger because again, as I just mentioned, Trump supporters are pretty committed.

I mean, Trump loses some, but he's not losing as much. He's not bleeding as much support to RFK Jr. or Cornel West or Jill Stein as Biden is. And so that's going to be a further complicating factor for President Biden is holding both those, right? Can't lose these uncommitted, these progressives who are protesting and also can't afford to lose any support to any of the third party candidates that are going to be on the ballot in some of these critical states. The way forward, I think, is quite interesting for both campaigns and also with these third party candidates. Explain the kind of black, Latino, Asian-American, Hispanic voter changes. It seems as if Donald Trump is making record gains in the Hispanic community and Joe Biden is not enjoying the lead that Democrats once did.

Yeah. So Axios had a piece this morning, which we ran on the front page of Real Clear Politics, which got picked up by some folks, including, I think, the RNC and some others. And basically the title of it is Democrats have a massive vulnerability by losing minority voters, blacks and Hispanics, obviously. And this has always been true.

It's just never, and it's been sort of moving over time. You've seen sort of punctuation points, you know, George W. Bush in, you know, 2000 with Hispanic voters, for example. But we've also seen this movement over the last couple of cycles with Donald Trump changing the party basically to a working class party. And he's picking up some of these voters. Again, it's less, I would say, it's less race-based than it is class-based, but he's pulling in particularly Hispanic and African-American men, but also folks from all across the spectrum based on his policies, sort of economic populism.

And then Joe Biden's fighting to hang onto those folks. But in this environment with inflation, with some of the policies that he's been pursuing, that leakage has continued. And so what Axios wrote was actually based on a Gallup study that was done earlier in the year, in early February, that showed that over the course of the last 25 years, basically, that the Democrats' share of the Hispanic vote and the African-American vote have dropped by about 20 percentage points. And Democrats have managed to offset some of that by winning college-educated voters in suburbs, postdoc degrees, et cetera. But the parties have done this pretty remarkable shift just in the last few cycles, and it has hurt the Democrats. And again, in this kind of environment, the white vote is sort of going down over time as its share of the electorate, and Republicans have certainly been winning a large percentage of that. But for Democrats, it has always been about having 95 percent of the African-American vote locked in in these states, winning Hispanics by 40 or 50 points in a lot of these states.

And that's simply not where they're at. And, you know, if they don't manage, if they lose even, you know, five or ten percent in those categories, it makes it really, really tough for them to compete in swing states. Are they going to still win California and New York?

Of course. But are they going to win Arizona? Are they going to win Georgia? Are they going to win some of these other battleground states?

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That is 888-596-0155 or visit StrongCell.com forward slash Charlie. Yeah, and so it seems if they're going all in, you know, the Democrats are Joe Biden on Wisconsin, on Michigan. If you had to say what was one of the great advantages that Joe Biden has, what would you think that is right now? The incumbency they're going to run on the abortion issue. Is this turning out to be an abortion referendum election? You know, it's not reflected in the polls, but again, it wasn't reflected. You go back and look at the pre-election polls in 2022 and abortion was well down the list. Now, again, you look at the partisan splits for Democrats, it was higher, in some cases pretty high, and it certainly motivated their base. But overall, and among independents and Republicans, it was well down the list. So I think it's too early to say exactly how, because again, I'll mention the USA Today Suffolk poll. Number one issue was inflation economy, 29%. Abortion was at 10%. So, you know, three times less in terms of the public's view of that as an important issue. But again, you know, we'll have abortion referenda on the ballot in certain states, in Arizona, for example, and other places. And I think that will help juice Democratic turnout, for sure. But again, that's going to be complicated by, you know, where's the economy?

Where is inflation? I mean, this is what's really, what's going on with immigration. Because these are issues that, in that USA Today Suffolk poll, immigration was number two. In some polls that have come out recently, it's been the top issue. So because of Lake and Riley, because it's been in the news, you know, Biden and Trump were just at the border last week or last. So immigration has been a top of mind issue. Is it going to continue that way? Hard to say.

We'll have to see. But certainly that's an issue that works in the Republicans' favor, works in Donald Trump's favor, not just in southern states, but in places in states like you mentioned up in the Rust Belt. The Real Clear Politics average is very instructive here. Just briefly, how are you factoring in and making sure you get accurate polling for the RFK factor, the third-party factor? That could be very difficult to poll, very difficult to pinpoint, very tough to predict. Well, listen, I mean, you know, we are aggregating all the various pollsters. And so, you know, we typically, not everybody's polling three-way races and not everybody's polling five-way race. Most pollsters are still doing a head-to-head.

But certainly, when we have that data, we're aggregating. So you can look at, we have a two-way page, a three-way page, and a five-way page at the national level. And then, again, where RFK has made the ballot, you can get some state-level data on that as well. I think Emerson just released a poll in Arizona showing a two-way race and a three-way race there.

So it's a little more sparse, though. And as you mentioned, it gets a little bit dicier in terms of, you know, what's the margin of error, how accurate is this going to be. And then, you know, traditionally, third-party candidates fall into that trap where they'll poll pretty well up until the time, you know, that voters go into the booth and decide, oh, you know, do I want to, quote-unquote, waste my vote on someone who I know doesn't have a chance to win if they're, you know, 10% or 15% or whatever. So RFK may end up suffering, something like that, but that's not something the polls can foresee. I mean, they just have to take in what voters are telling them before they go into the voting booth.

And then, you know, when they get in the booth, they may come out on the other side and the results may be, you know, strikingly different. For years, I've been talking about how our nation's public schools have been captured by progressive ideologues, especially true of your Christian family. For those of you worried about the best educational path for your kids and grandkids, I want to tell you about how Turning Point Academy is working with the Herzog Foundation, how you at home can also benefit from it. They have an online publication called The Lion, and also Making the Leap, the Herzog Foundation offers a wide range of advice and information for Christian parents to make the best education decisions for your kids.

Go to Herzogfoundation.com, that is Herzogfoundation.com, so check it out right now, Herzogfoundation.com. Portions of The Charlie Kirk Show are brought to you in part by the Stanley M. Herzog Foundation, that is Herzogfoundation.com. So, Tom, let me ask you, if Donald Trump were to get the label slapped on him as convicted felon, how, if at all, will that move just based on your polling and looking at issue-based polling, will that be a mover of public sentiment and political outcomes? So, there is some, you know, there's some I think the conventional wisdom is, and there is some data that suggests that if he is convicted of any of the charges, that that would be a deal breaker for some folks who are currently supporting him. I personally am skeptical of that, just because certainly on the Republican side, you know, most Republican voters already see most of these charges overwhelmingly as being politically motivated, and obviously Democrats are on the other side, so we're really talking about independents to a certain degree. And I just don't know that a lot of this stuff is already, I think, baked into, because it's been in the news every single day for months now, that it's baked into the calculus of a lot of these voters when they get asked this question. So, I'm skeptical that it would be a game changer, but we actually have to wait and see. I mean, I think there is some data that suggests that Trump would be hurt by that.

We'll have to see if that actually pans out if and when any of these convictions happen. So, Tom, you know, we're heading towards nomination season. Do you have any idea or indication of, you know, who Trump picks as the vice president?

He says it doesn't matter. I think it could actually matter more than ever. This is kind of win or lose for Donald Trump. This is kind of who he is designating as the future of his movement. There's questions about whether or not he's going to go to jail or what that looks like.

And I certainly hope not. How should we think about this awfully consequential vice presidential selection? Yeah, you can certainly make the argument. Historically, it hasn't mattered, right? People vote for the top of the ticket. They don't really vote for whoever's down below.

However, I mean, you do have a race with the two oldest men ever to run against each other. And certainly when you look at, you know, Biden's side, he's got Kamala there and that represents its own thing. For Trump, it's a similar thing.

It's not just a jail thing. He's 77. I mean, he is no spring chicken, even when you look at the actuarial tables. And so who, as you mentioned, who is he going to pick that can potentially step in and continue, if it were to come to that, his policies and executing his vision, his agenda and caring for that sort of, you know, the maggot torch.

There's been some polling on this. Folks, you know, his supporters like the vague. They like, you know, Ron DeSantis, his name has been bandied about out there. You know, it's hard to say who he's going to choose. Even people, even as you know, as you know, Charlie, I mean, Trump does what Trump wants to do and he does it when he wants to do it. And sometimes the folks who are even closest around him don't know until he actually makes the decision. So he's just playing around with a lot of names right now, because if you talk to reporters, they say, oh, I know for certain or this as I don't think any the decision hasn't been made, Tom. Yeah.

I mean, didn't he say that he's made it? Even that, I don't believe. I think that might be for effect.

So it's also one of these things, too. You know, people are saying, well, you got to look very hard at women because they'll check a box or something and Trump needs something. I don't know that Trump thinks like that. I don't know that he is thinking, you know, of that strategically about this. He's going to pick someone that I think he likes, that he trusts, that that is going to be loyal to him, loyal to his agenda. But I'm not sure he's he's going to go with a woman just because he thinks that might help him electorally. He could. And certainly there are some good choices out there for him if he were to go that direction.

But I just don't know that he's he's thinks about it in the same way that most traditional politicians think about it. I think that's smart. Tom, everyone should check out Real Clear Politics. It's terrific.

I look I go there every day. Tom, thanks so much. Thanks, Charlie. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always, freedom at Charlie Kirk dot com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless.