FDL Review

If the 2024 elections were held today, the FDL Review model finds that Republicans would retake the Senate and presidency while holding the House of Representatives. This is unchanged from our findings last week. Over the past week, former President Donald Trump’s advantage in the Electoral College shrank from 44 votes to six. This is because Vice President Kamala Harris captured a 0.007-point advantage in Pennsylvania, which Trump led last week by 0.11. Hurting Trump at the margins, polling indicates that Harris’s supporters are marginally more enthusiastic and certain to vote than the former president’s. This could be the result of Trump’s lackluster ground-game operation. That said, Trump’s 272 votes are a safer bet than Harris’s 266. Our model indicates that he leads in all ‘his’ states by at least 1.46 percentage points, whereas two of Harris’s states—Pennsylvania and Michigan—are within a percentage point. Trump would win the national popular vote by 1.39 percentage points if t...

If the 2024 elections were held today, the FDL Review model finds that Republicans would retake the Senate and presidency while holding the House of Representatives. According to our model, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump would win 291 electoral votes to Vice President Kamala Harris’s 247. This would make Trump the first president to win a second nonconsecutive term since Grover Cleveland in 1892 . Our model finds that Trump would win Arizona (by 2.75 p.p.), Georgia (1.35), North Carolina (1.86), Pennsylvania (0.11), and Wisconsin (4.85) if the election were held today. Harris would prevail in Michigan (by 0.34 p.p.), Minnesota (4.02), Nevada (0.86), New Hampshire (4.98), and Virginia (4.79). Further, our model finds that Trump would win the popular vote by 0.75 percentage point, powered by what would be the tightest presidential margins in California and New York since 2004 and 1988 , respectively. Trump would lose California by 22.83 points, compared to 29.16 in 2020 . In the ...

Constitutional conservatives’ primary worldly commitment is to the Constitution, which lists our fundamental freedoms, defines the national government’s limited powers, and frames a political structure oriented toward the maximization of liberty. Former President Donald Trump’s promises and record won over many constitutional conservatives in 2016 and 2020. However, Trump has shown that his second administration would be a disappointment to constitutional conservatives, who should take a principled pass on his 2024 bid even though polls show that he would beat President Joe Biden. Trump’s Record Will Not Be His 2024 Roadmap Factbase’s archive indicates that Trump has used the phrase “constitutional conservative” precisely once. However, shortly before Trump announced his 2016 bid, he aligned himself squarely with constitutional conservatives by tweeting  this sage George Washington quote : “The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.” And, about a year later, Trump ...

The S&P 500 took a 21% plunge in the first six months of 2022, minting the index’s worst performance in that interval since 1970. President Joe Biden The University of Michigan reports that consumer sentiment is at its lowest level in the history of their survey, which has been running since just after the Second World War. Inflation remains at 8.6%, and the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow service forecasts that the United States is in the midst of a recession (defined by economists as two quarters of economic contraction). Fair or unfair, headlines like these explain why just 33.4% of Americans approve of President Joe Biden’s job performance on the economy. The tight labor market may be the 46th president’s only viable economic talking point, and even that one is dubious: The labor-force participation rate remains more than one percentage point lower than it was in February 2020.

Americans continue to sour on President Joe Biden, whose approval rating has been in the red since mid-August. Rasmussen Reports, a conservative pollster that tracks the president's approval rating daily, pegs his disapproval rating among likely voters at a whopping 60%. President Joe Biden Just 38% of likely voters approve of Biden's job performance in Rasmussen polling, an all-time low for the 46th president. The left-leaning Quinnipiac College polling operation reports that Biden's approval rating is only 35% among registered voters, and 33% among all Americans. At this point in former President Donald Trump's tenure, Rasmussen pegged his approval rating at 46%. The 45th president hit a 38% approval rating only once in his presidency (on August 2, 2017) and never saw his support slip below that level. Polls show that Trump would beat Biden by almost five points in the popular vote if the 2024 election were held today. Trump lost the popular vote in both 2016 and...

Besieged by crises since the Taliban fully retook Afghanistan in August, President Joe Biden may have been hoping for some Christmas cheer. But the pivotal member of the U.S. Senate, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, announced Sunday that he will not support the president’s blowout social-spending package, dooming the legislation. And this Monday morning, Marist College released the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour poll, which pegs Biden’s approval rating at its lowest point yet. President Joe Biden (Flickr) If Marist’s survey is to be taken at face value despite the liberal bias of sponsors NPR and PBS , Biden’s approval rating among all American adults is 41%. 55% disapprove of his job performance. Among registered voters, Biden is at 42% approval. Limited Support Overall: Independents hold the president’s job performance in low regard, evidenced by his 29% approval rating among that key subgroup. 66% of independents disapprove of Biden’s job performance, and 50% strongly disapprove. J...