Bloomberg Poll: Almost Half of Swing-State Voters Expect Violence During November's Elections

It's new poll time again. A new Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday consulted 4,962 registered voters on a wide variety of politicians and issues, and some of the results are interesting; particularly the result that a strong plurality of the registered voters surveyed indicated they expect violence to break out around this fall's elections.

The Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll asked voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, “How much do you trust each of the following — That the election and its aftermath will be free from violence.”
Thirty-one percent of respondents said “not much,” while 18 percent said “not at all.” Thirty-five percent said “some,” and those answering “a lot” equaled 16 percent.
The same poll also found that in a hypothetical match-up between former President Trump and President Biden, the swing-state voters went for Trump by 4 points, with Trump at 48 percent in the poll versus Biden’s 44 percent.

The violence indicator is disturbing. The uprisings, for that's likely what they will be, will not wait for the elections; we're very likely to see "mostly peaceful" protests around the major parties' conventions, as well.

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I've been saying it and I'll keep saying it — we're in for a long, hot summer.

As for the second indicator: "Hypothetical match-up" polls of this nature don't really mean all that much, as we don't elect presidents by a popular vote, and most such polls don't follow the Electoral College model. But the story linked here also lists data from a New York Times swing-state poll:

A recent poll from The New York Times found Trump ahead of Biden by 3 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 5 points in Michigan, 7 points in Arizona, 10 points in Georgia and 12 points in Nevada. Biden, however, beat Trump in Wisconsin by 2 points.

That aligns well with the RealClearPolitics battleground state averages, which, as of this writing, show Trump ahead — in some cases by a razor-thin margin — in all of these key battlegrounds.

If one digs down into the Bloomberg/Morning Consult survey, though, one can find a few interesting data points.

After a series of questions about individual issues, the survey asks a free-form question about which issues the respondents felt were most important issues in the upcoming election:

Asking this a different way, what is the single most important issue to you when deciding how to vote in the November 2024 election for U.S. president?

The top two — by a considerable margin — were the economy (35 percent) and immigration (14 percent). Scrolling down, we can see what the respondents thought of each major party candidate on these issues:

Who do you trust more to handle each of the following issues? — The Economy

Donald Trump polled at 50 percent, while Joe Biden received only 37 percent.

Who do you trust more to handle each of the following issues? — Immigration

On this issue, Trump's lead was even wider — 51 percent to 34 percent.

The original poll report can be read here.

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Polls like this are snapshots. Further, they are snapshots of a limited group of people. Polling averages over time, however, tell more of a tale, and as noted above, the RealClearPolitics averages are all moving towards Trump. Lawfare notwithstanding, people are starting to pay attention.

Here's the qualifier — you knew there was going to be a qualifier, right? The qualifier is that a fair number of voters, maybe enough to turn the election, have historically not started paying attention until after the conventions. Many have not paid attention until after Labor Day. That's not surprising, as most people aren't really political junkies, and through the summer, most people are concerned with vacations (if there are still any regular folks about who can still afford vacations) and weekend cookouts. Even so, this summer, if we see political violence in Chicago and Milwaukee, voters may well start paying attention a little sooner; and make no mistake, the violence will be initiated and perpetrated by the left. That's bound to influence some voters.

This Bloomberg survey is, yes, a snapshot. But it's another data point that points in the same direction. On many key issues, the voting public seems to be coming around to the right. Whether they can vote that way, over the margin of shenanigans, remains to be seen.