CNN’s John Avlon said Monday that a New York Times/Siena College poll showing President Joe Biden losing to former President Donald Trump in key swing states should be a “major wake-up call to all Democrats.”
The poll found Biden trailing Trump in five out of six crucial swing states by substantial margins, with Trump polling between three and 10 points ahead in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Biden holds a slight lead in Wisconsin. The incumbent has also seen sharp declines in support among women (among whom he holds a 50-42 lead), Hispanics (also 50-42) and black voters (71-22), according to the poll.
CNN analyst Errol Louis argued that Democrats will “come home” when election time comes and that the idea of Trump more than doubling his share of the 2020 black vote is “not something that you can take all that seriously.”
“Likewise with the Latino vote. You know, the notion that Trump could almost catch [Biden among] women voters … I just don’t buy that,” he added. (RELATED: CNN Host Says White House Has To Acknowledge New Poll ‘Not Exactly Great’ For Biden)
“But now, what this does do is it suggests that Democrats have to get out there, they’ve got to talk to their younger voters. The 18-to-29s are the ones I think they should be worried about because they get their information from different places. They’re getting it from TikTok or wherever,” Louis continued. “You’ve got to also talk to women and sort of get into the coalitions, the activist coalitions that form the base of the Democratic Party. The labor coalitions, the environmentalists, the women’s groups. You’ve got to do it, you’ve got to work them.”
“You’ve got to make it so that everybody’s on message. Now, there’s a timing issue here, and Biden knows this, I think, better than most politicians in America. You can start too early too. You can blow a lot of money, you can spin up a lot of issues, but then you really got to hit it hard next year, next June. So we should have this conversation in six months and see where they are,” he concluded.
“With all due respect to my dear friend Errol, I disagree with him about the posture that, ‘Yeah, everyone’s gonna come home especially if you call them,'” Avlon responded. “I think it’s too late to wait for next year. What this is among other things is a failure to really hammer home basic messages to the base and to swing voters as well. This poll should be a major wake-up call to all Democrats, as well as the White House.”
“Yes, it’s a snapshot in time. Yes, Democrats have been out outperforming in special elections this year dramatically. There are countervailing things,” he added. “But if Democrats are starting to slide among young people, among Hispanics and African Americans, when a lot of the fact patterns are pretty good, it’s in part because Biden’s team has not been selling the accomplishments of this administration, and they have not been responding clearly enough to these kinds of trends that are not their friend.”
Biden’s campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz responded to the poll by telling The New York Times that the administration is not worried. “[W]e’ll win in 2024 by putting our heads down and doing the work, not by fretting about a poll,” he said, per the outlet.