President Biden is in big trouble winning the 2024 election because the economy is tanking.
New York Republicans cannot win another race in the Empire State without winning over a big majority of independent voters.
Those are the two big takeaways from a presentation at the New York State Conservative conference by Brian Larkin, Director of Research at McLaughlin & Associates, a political polling and consulting firm.
First, Larkin started with national polling concerning the 2024 presidential election.
According to his most recent research, 43% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track under President Biden’s leadership.
“That’s bad news for him,” said Larkin.
The news gets worse for the President in pretty much every category they polled, including:
70% of all independent voters, 67% of men, and 72% of women are saying the country is going down the wrong track with Joe Biden as President.
The only bright spot for the first term President: 36% of independent women are still not sure who they are going to vote for in the 2024 election.
“It’s going to be a very difficult job for President Biden to win over these independents, but independent women will swing this election,” added Larkin.
The state of the economy is the biggest concern amongst voters across the country, with 51% of men and 43% of women listing it as their biggest concern.
“While we are in a very polarized country right now, economic issues, pocketbook issues, kitchen table issues, will drive the ballot against Joe Biden,” said the McLaughlin & Associates researcher.
Turning to New York State, it is crystal clear that any Republican or Conservative candidate will need far more than those winning all of the voters within those two political parties to win an election any time soon.
The reason is simply a numbers game. There are far more Democrats than all other political parties combined. According to the most recent data posted to the New York State Board of Elections on November 1st, 2023, there are approximately 6,401,229 Democrats in the Empire State.
That dwarfs registered Republicans, who have 2,885,981 voters enrolled in their party. The Conservative Party ranks third in enrollment in New York State with 163,905 voters, followed by the Working Families Party with 53,565 enrolled voters.
As a matter of fact, more people registered to vote but declined to enroll with a political party in New York State compared to registered Republicans. There are 3,133,343 “blank” or unaffiliated voters in New York.
Those are the voters Republicans and Conservatives should target when running for office according to Larkin, so-called independent voters who are not affiliated with any party.
Proof of that is the last race for New York Governor, where Republican Lee Zeldin lost to current incumbent Kathy Hochul 53% to 47%.
Outside of the New York City media market, where more Republicans and Conservatives tend to live, Zeldin beat Hochul 54% to 30%.
But the Democrat won 70% of the vote over Zeldin in the heavily populated and heavily Democratic New York City media market.
“Looking at the current active Republican voter registration. Let’s say you win 95% of your own party vote and evenly split all the others, the Republican candidate still loses with 38% of the total vote,” said Larkin.
“If you don’t win over independent voters, statistically. You’ll never win statistically if you split the independent vote. You have to increase that. Without targeting and winning 68% of the independent vote, it will be a very, very heavy lift statewide,” concluded Larkin.