again: i'm not going to be doing in depth polling analyses this cycle.

but, is biden really competitive in states like arizona and georgia, all of a sudden?

what i'm going to say is this: not only is it early, but the quality of the polling at this point is fairly poor. i'm not going to make a sophomoric argument about "reverting to the mean", and you should mostly throw away articles that are making that argument, as it isn't really applicable to popular opinion, in general. humans don't obey physical laws like that; we can get up and do whatever we want, there's really no reason to think we're going to revert to anything, in any scenario, at all. but, the polls we're getting at the moment are internet polls, or fox news polls, or polls that were bought and paid for by the parties, themselves.

that doesn't mean they're wrong, exactly.

it just means that you should have very low confidence in them, especially when they make very little sense.

if biden is going to win arizona, he's going to have to do exceedingly well with latinos, and there's little reason to take that idea seriously, given that he was deputy deporter-in-chief. he did terribly with them in the primaries. it's hard to believe that latin-speakers on the border are going to see this election as offering much of a substantive choice. so, it's a very, very tall order.

and, you could say the same thing about his chances in texas. i'm also going to throw a wrench in that argument - if biden does exceedingly poorly with apathetic latinos, who may also find themselves up against even more serious restrictions in their ability to actually vote than usual this cycle, we could see some surprises in some states around arizona that have leaned democratic recently, namely nevada, new mexico and colorado, which at the least may be a little closer than expected.

it's not that targeting latinos in this region is a bad strategy; to the contrary, i'd recommend it. and, i've been vocal about the need to build some kind of working class coalition between migrant workers in the south and factory workers in the north, which is what nafta was designed to prevent. the problem is biden; the blacks like him, but the hispanics do not, and the party should be focusing on damage control and holding what they have this cycle, not pretending that biden can win arizona or texas. a different candidate could potentially be competitive this cycle, but not one with the baggage in the migrant community that biden has.

sadly, this is a blown opportunity, as you could have run just about anything against trump on the border and beat him in the latino community.....except biden. i would expect low turnout, in the end, and trump to hold those states and do better than expected in the ones around them....

and, what about georgia? the carolinas? florida?

again: much of the polling is low quality, and the polling that is better quality seems to suggest that it's not close enough for biden to overpower the systemic biases that exist in these states, that make it difficult for blacks, specifically, to vote. if the polling in georgia is a toss-up, that's not good enough - he needs to be clearly ahead, outside of the margins, or voter suppression will hand the win to the republicans, across the board. hispanics in florida also tend to lean republican anyways, and i wouldn't expect biden to be very appealing to them, either. if biden is going to win florida, he's going to do it by sweeping retirees, who appear to be dying in large numbers. i don't seriously think any of these regions are in play.

i understand that the party wants to find some other way to win besides winning in the upper midwest, but biden is pretty much the worst candidate imaginable if you're trying to win hispanics, and while he is winning blacks rather comfortably, the margins are not just lower than obama's, but lower than clinton's too. it's not enough to flip anything.

he has to get white liberals out to vote to actually tip - and that's as true in georgia as it is in michigan. they're the demographic that was most important in 2018, they're what actually won biden the primary and they're the demographic that is most important, now, too.

...whether you like it or not.

we'll see if that changes in 2022 or 2024, but if it does, it doesn't help biden win just right now.