Thread by @SimonWDC

Been amazing to watch the flood of polls hitting the center-left ecosystem this year.

What remains common, and arguably dangerous, is the failure of many to distinguish between what is popular and what is popular AND important, meaning that it could drive someone's vote. 1/x

Let's use latest @NavigatorSurvey data on what Dem voters want Biden/Congress to focus on:

COVID 75%
Jobs/Economy 51%
Climate/Weather 48%
Health Care 41%
Social Security/Medicare 28%
Afghanistan 25%
Natl Security 21%

What the clear dominance of COVID in the issue environment right now means that any poll testing Biden's agenda which does not test elements against COVID and the ARP-led recovery are painting a very incomplete picture, and may in fact be misleading. 3/x

When you have an issue like COVID so clearly dominating the landscape, it means that spending time on other matters, particularly ones way down on the list, can actually be counterproductive for it looks to voters like you've taken your eye off the ball. 4/x

Understanding this dynamic helps explain why Biden's numbers could have dropped with 6.5% GDP growth, 1m jobs a month, 30-40m child tax credit checks, 180m stimulus checks.

For good as all that was COVID mattered more, and COVID got worse. 5/x

simon-rosenberg.medium.com/a-stronger-res…

Which is why when we talk about "the Biden agenda" we have to talk about the American Rescue Plan first and foremost.

It's simply the most important part of his agenda to voters.

Polling his agenda w/o polling on COVID/ARP is IMHO close to worthless. 6/x
ndn.org/fall-to-do-list

Let's take the Medicare expansion provisions under consideration right now. They are very popular in many polls. But looking at the issue list above, they are for Dem voters "nice to haves" not "must to haves."

They matter, but other things are more important. 7/x

In fact what the @NavigatorSurvey data suggests is whether we can get the climate provisions in the final BBB package will matter much more to Democrats than many of the other provisions. 8/x

I've been reading and using Democratic polling for 30 years. And just want to go on the record that I think we are seeing an explosion of junky polling these days, polling that is not properly testing both popularity of issues AND their import. 9/x

I can't be the only one who's wondering why after seeing months of polls showing that all the Biden proposals are crazy popular his numbers have dropped so much.

In today's @NavigatorSurvey Biden is 46-51. How can this be if all his proposals are so popular? 10/x

Think we know how we're going to run next year:

"We've overcome GOP extremism to defeat COVID, grow the economy for all, tackle climate, improve health care, fix immigration etc

And they remain too radical, too dangerous to allow back into power." 11/x

ndn.org/2022-early-Dem…

I remain deeply optimistic that ARP + infrastructure + reconciliation + whatever we do next year will give us a very powerful agenda to run on in 2022.

But as run the most important part to voters is likely to be the ARP, and we can't forget that. 12/x

ndn.org/2021-year-Dems…