Last year, a small group of voters did something unusual. The voters who said they “somewhat disapprove” of President Joe Biden actually broke towards Democrats, the party in power, helping to blunt an expected red wave and bucking recent trends where these voters have supported the party that’s not in power.
And this group of “lesser of two evils” voters, who last year made up around 10% of the electorate, could be crucial in determining who wins in 2024.
The new national NBC News poll finds that these voters are once again signaling that, while they aren’t wild about Biden, they could still support him, especially if he’s facing Trump.
Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research, who conducted the poll along with Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, dubbed these voters the “BOWA Biden voters,” or the “best of what’s around.”
While these voters would support Biden over Trump in a hypothetical rematch, they were split between Biden and DeSantis, helping to explain Biden’s narrower margin against DeSantis versus the former president.
That shift, even among this small group of voters, is “the difference between winning and losing an election,” Horwitt said. For more on these “BOWA Biden voters,” check out NBC News.com.
In other campaign news…
Crashing the party: NBC News’ Jonathan Allen, Matt Dixon, Garrett Haake and Henry J. Gomez report that former President Donald Trump is leaning “heavily” toward skipping the first GOP presidential debate in August and may hold his own counterprogramming of the event.
The old man and the presidency: NBC’s Carol E. Lee and Mike Memoli take a look at how Biden has been making more jokes about his age amid the increasing voter discomfort around it as he runs for re-election.
The “bravado” defense: Amid the publication of an audio recording that appears to capture Trump discussing sensitive military documents, Trump told Semafor and ABC News that he wasn’t handling classified information and was solely speaking with “bravado.”
Clean up on aisle GOP: Hours after Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNBC that he doesn’t know if Trump is “the strongest [GOP presidential candidate] to win the election,” he gave an interview to the conservative Breitbart News where he declared that Trump is “stronger today than he was in 2016.”
Haley hits Trump’s “moral weakness”: Trump’s former United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley, took some direct shots at Trump’s handling of China and criticized his “moral weakness in his zeal to befriend [Chinese] President Xi” during a Tuesday speech, per NBC News’ Ali Vitali, Liz Brown-Kaiser and Brennan Leach.
A lead preserved in granite: Trump has slightly expanded his lead in New Hampshire, according to a new poll from the Saint Anselm College Survey Center that pegs him at 47% with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 19%. Meanwhile, DeSantis held his first town hall in the state Tuesday (as Trump also spoke in the state), taking questions from voters and sidestepping one on the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, per NBC’s Henry J. Gomez and Jonathan Allen.
Give no quarter: Former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney told NBC News’ Lester Holt that while she considers her own 2024 plans, she won’t “do anything that helps Donald Trump.”
Suarez stumbles: Miami Mayor Francis Suarez stumbled Tuesday when asked about the Uyghur ethnic group in China, asking conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt “what’s a Uyghur?” and later jokingly referring to them as “a Weeble.”
The Veep: Politico reports on how Vice President Kamala Harris is stepping up her presence on the campaign and messaging circuit as she looks to improve her standing with the voters ahead of next year’s election.
Taking sides: Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi is taking sides in the Arizona Senate race, headlining a fundraiser for Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, NBC News’ Kate Santaliz reports. Gallego is challenging Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a former Democrat, although Sinema has not yet said if she is running for re-election.
No Moore: The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the so-called independent state legislature theory in the case known as Moore v. Harper, which would have limited state courts’ authority over election laws. The move undermines attorney John Eastman’s case for overturning the 2020 election, and NBC News’ Lawrence Hurley writes that “the new ruling made it clear that it and similar far-fetched theories will not fly in the 2024 election either.”
