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A televised panel is never going to be actually any good. There's way too much "look mom I'm on TV". A well put together focus group is superior, and these actually do tend to reflect actual campaign trends pretty well. Even survey takers are subject to "this is a survey" bias, but we've gotten better over the years at comparing these surveys to physical realities, namely the public vote counts broken down by polling precinct, that most of the time we can figure this out and make appropriate adjustments. And all of these methods have found that yes, swing voters do exist as a small group, and yes, things like enthusiasm do predict turnout.
I believe you are correct.
How many "double haters" would voluntarily show up for a no-cameras focus group? It certainly wouldn't be zero, but I think it would be drastically less than the "10% of likely voters" number I see thrown around all the time.
In my opinion, Presidential campaigns since about Bush-Gore in 2000 come down to 47%/47% Blue vs Red default vote. We know the two big structural variables are the economy and incumbency advantage. Sometimes war is also that, but generally only one the U.S. is fully and obviously involved in and that has some strong immediate emotional saliency (Vietnam in 1968, Iraq in 2004).
Beyond that, it's mostly about the candidates building competing narratives targeted at the most important voter demographics in swing states and a little "get out the vote" party machinery. Therefore, running an effective campaign in the sense of management and execution - almost at a corporate level - isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing. Substance, issues, vision kind of doesn't matter if you can't get it into voters heads, and you do that with a lot of activity that looks more like a corporate marketing campaign than you do with impassioned Patrick Henry level speeches.
The accurate knock against the 2016 Trump campaign was that it was poorly run. It absolutely was. But it was better run than the Hillary campaign that (a) Took off the month of September and (b) routinely dismissed highly reliable polls on the midwest and didn't focus her visits there when it mattered.
So when I look at Trump vs Biden in 2024, I'm looking at who's running a better campaign like an investor looks at the operations of a logistics company. Obviously, I can't get into the various war rooms on a day to day basis, so I have to use public appearances and general messaging as a proxy. The debate on Thursday showed me that with a full week of preparation and multiple months of "he's cognitively sharp!" messaging, the Biden campaign couldn't turn in the basics. This is like my analogous logistics company failing to print shipping labels. It's a failure at such a basic level.
Whatever the recovery plan might be - Biden stays in, but Harris becomes more visible, a ticket flip (Harris-Biden instead of Biden-Harris) - it doesn't matter. The ops are broken. The basics aren't in place. Certainly not at the level to achieve an insanely high risk stunt that they now have to do because of the Debate.
There is a reason why focus group participants are paid. How many double haters would explain just how much they hate both candidates in front of a sympathetic audience for $100? Quite a lot.
The point of a focus group isn't to get a large enough sample for statistically meaningful results - it is to listen to what people say. You only need 5-15 people to hear all the common opinions, so you can afford to pay them.
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