Opinion
The surprising results of a focus group of swing voters ought to keep Biden humble
The coveted undecided voter is profoundly unpredictable — and isn't swayed in obvious ways by Trump's conviction.
June 5, 2024, 6:06 PM EDT
By Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC
Last week, four hours after Trump received his felony conviction of falsifying business records, The New York Times and Republican pollster Frank Luntz conducted a focus group with 11 undecided voters from across the country to understand why they’re still not sure who they’re going to cast their ballot for in 2024. The riveting result, published Tuesday, allows us to briefly peer into the minds of some of the most coveted but poorly understood parts of the American electorate. And while these voters’ words should humble political prognosticators on both sides of the aisle,I found that a lot of the conversation was particularly concerning for Biden.
In addition to being undecided, the participants all had supported or been open to former President Donald Trump and one of his opponents (Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden) at least once in the 2016, 2020 or 2024 elections. Swing voters tend to be less politically engaged and hold idiosyncratic policy views that don’t necessarily add up to a conventionally discernible ideology. And in this election cycle, many of them are defined by their distaste for both candidates. In this focus group, those tendencies were on full display, with participants panning both Trump and Biden and taking counterintuitive positions on candidates they once favored.
More than anything, the conversation was a reminder that the swing voter is profoundly unpredictable.
More than anything, the conversation was a reminder that the swing voter is profoundly unpredictable.But the conversation made clear that Trump’s felony conviction is not a slam dunk for Biden. We already knew that most of Trump’s base is unfazed by Trump’s legal troubles, but what’s interesting is how voters without a firm commitment to either candidate split on the issue. Whiletwo participants described Trump’s conviction as disqualifying in their eyes, another two said it was Biden who looked worse after the verdict. John, a 58-year-old white Pennsylvania voter, said that Biden was “off the table” for him because he didn’t like how Biden responded to the verdict,explaining that “Biden looks ungracious and looks incredibly weak to me.”And Jorge, a 52-year-old Latino voter from California, said heagreed because Biden “has dirty hands on this” and that “they need to do something to influence voters, something like this, so he can win the election.”
Both voters seemed to believe that Biden was either somehow behind the trial or unfairly exploiting it, and that made him less favorable in their view. And one participant, Neshunda, a 36-year-old Black Florida voter, didn’t go quite as far, but seemed upset by the notion that the trial was a political exercise: “It just seems like with the timing of the trial and everything, right before elections, it’s just a little off-putting for them to go to this level.”
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-guilty-swing-voters-2024-election-biden-rcna155519