WaPo misses the point in focus group

Our of small focus group, 9 of 15 would vote for Biden again... because "Trump is worse".

None want a Trump-Biden re-match. Most do not want Biden to run again but despite that fact, they will choose him over Trump if that is the choice. They all said that Biden is too old and feeble to do the job. They all described themselves as concerned and worried about facing a re-match. Some even claim to be panicked by the possibility. Of the fifteen, only three said they would go back to Trump and vote for him. Nine of the fifteen said they would vote for Biden again. Three said they would not vote or find a third-party candidate.

Let's start with the premise that the WaPo focus group is on the up and up and that WaPo was being completely fair and hones. Yeah, I know... hard to swallow, but let's assume for assumption sake. Given that, it certainly sounds like doom and gloom for Trump based on how this is being played. If a majority of these swing voters will vote for Biden then it must be a done deal. Trump cannot win!

Unless you consider that Biden would lose 40% of that fairly large demographic that he won in 2020. This is actually a lose lose for Biden. Think about it. If only 60% of those voters would vote for him again and 20% would vote for Trump, that actually would put a significant dent in Biden's reelection chances. That literally suggests that Trump has gained ground (not lost it) since 2020 with these voters overall.

So how many voters are we talking about here? If you read into the exit polls and do a little math, there appeared to be about 4.7 million voters who switched from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020. If the WaPo focus group is any indication than about 1.9 million of those would no longer vote for Biden and just under a million of those would switch their votes and go with Trump. That is a total swing of about 2.85 million votes. That would cut Biden's 4.4% 2020 popular vote win into a much closer 2.6% popular vote win. That actually puts us much closer in line with 2016 than it would 2020.

So in an election where three states decided the election and those margins were 0.3%, 0.4%, and 0.6% respectively, then Biden losing 40% of those voters (and losing 20% back to Trump) could easily flip all three of those states. In fact, it would be hard to imagine anything differently happening.

Granted there is a smaller subsection of Clinton voters who voted for Trump in 2020. Perhaps there are a few of those who might switch back to the Democrat (Biden). But that doesn't really seem as intuitive as the other way around. They decided they liked Trump well enough after 4 years of him being President to vote for him. So unless of course, these Trump voters really believe Biden is doing an even better job, that switch seems unlikely. I mean how many Trump voters believe Biden is doing a band up job as President?