[Done!] #PassTheTorch: Call Your Representatives
Biden is going to lose badly in November. You can help beat Trump by getting Biden to step down, by calling your representatives. Here's how & why, with responses to common concerns and polls.
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Why Biden stepping down would help beat Trump
If Biden stays on the ballot, please do vote for him. Unfortunately, the reality after the debate is that Trump is on track to beat Biden comfortably, this time with an army of vetted loyalists and near-absolute immunity. We recommend this harrowing-but-amusing John Oliver video if you aren’t up to speed on Project 2025 and Schedule F. Asking Biden to pass the torch isn’t a referendum on his (in many ways very impressive) record. It’s about beating Trump. Biden is losing by a wide margin in polls, and 74% of voters think Biden is too old to be president. But we can still win by nominating a different candidate.
Open Labs internal Democratic polling, known for being more accurate than public polling averages1, finds that Biden is:
behind >4% in every swing state.
behind even in Democratic strongholds like New Hampshire, Virginia, and New Mexico.
behind 7% in Pennsylvania, a state pivotal to winning enough electoral college votes to beat Trump.
expected to get only 223 of the 270 electoral college votes (EVs) he needs to win.
Other polls look bad too, with most putting Biden consistently behind in all key swing states (charts below).
CNN says 72% of voters think Biden should not be running (vs. 63% pre-debate).
Open Labs analytics predict that Buttigieg would beat Trump with 301 EVs and Whitmer would win with 290. In contrast, they expect Biden to lose with just 223, and Harris to do moderately better with 240. New polling also suggests alternative candidates would outperform Biden or Harris.
Biden’s team says he’s not dropping out just because of pundits. But the team does care what voters and politicians think. You can help convince them by calling your elected (Democratic) representative and ask they advise Biden to pass the torch. See guide below.
Responses to Common Questions
If not Biden, who? Could anyone else beat Trump?
Right now, Biden is on track to lose. The most likely alternatives all perform better. While even Kamala Harris would do better than Biden, candidates strong in swing-states, like Whitmer, significantly outperform both of them.
According to new data, Biden is far behind in every swing state Democrats need to win, including 7% down in the tipping-point state of Pennsylvania. Biden is even somewhat behind in some non-swing states (see chart below). This is data from Open Labs, whose polling techniques consistently outperform other polling operations (2/3 MSE of public polling averages). Biden also lags Trump in national popular vote polls by 2.7%. Nate Silver’s model gives Biden just a 28% chance of winning in November (down from just 34% pre-debate), and Silver expects this to drop more. Three quarters of voters think another candidate would have a better chance at beating Trump. Sticking with Biden is nearly equivalent to accepting a second Trump presidency. Even if we’re not sure how it would turn out, shaking things up seems like the best play here.
Right now pollsters are going into overdrive testing out various candidates to see how they might fare in a head-to-head with Donald Trump. Some numbers have been circulating which show other candidates would do about the same as Biden. However, more sophisticated analytics are showing that alternative candidates would have a dramatically higher chance of winning against Trump. Another sophisticated pollster further validated these conclusion on July 9th. The same source shows Biden’s favorability is much lower than others’.
Finally, replacing Biden opens some avenues of attack that aren’t viable while Biden is the candidate. Namely Trump is 78 years old and has shown plenty of ‘senior moments’ himself - stumbling over speech, forgetting words, saying nonsense, etc. This is a powerful line of attack but it’s mostly self-harming while Biden is running.
Biden’s historically low approval ratings have persisted despite the campaign’s best efforts over the last several months (and years).
Polling of other alternatives against Trump weeks after the debate replicate Open Labs’ findings - they all signficantly outperform Biden.
Side note: Harris is unlikely to be our best bet
Just as Biden benefited from Obama’s popularity, Harris is tangled up with Biden’s messier legacy of high inflation and a spike in illegal immigration. As evidenced by the data above, her popularity closely mirrors Biden’s and her ability to win the election is only marginally higher than Biden’s.
Various other polls have shown Harris performing similarly to Biden against Trump, though some more recent polls show improvement. We believe certain candidates have a much higher chance of beating Trump (like Whitmer, Buttigieg, Shapiro or Beshear) and plan to address that in a future post.
Could a replacement get on the ballot in all 50 states? Is there enough time?
Excerpt from the New York Magazine’s Intelligencer:
At this point, Biden is simply the “presumptive nominee.” The Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which begins on August 19, would normally name the actual nominee. […] Until then, the name that will go onto the bumper stickers, theoretically at least, could be Joe Biden, me, or you.
The only state that previously posed complications was Ohio (which Democrats are very unlikely to win to begin with), rendering this issue inconsequential for Democrats’ chances. Furthermore, Ohio passed legislation to change the deadline to be after the DNC, so this should no longer be an issue.
There are 4 months until the election. That’s enough time for an energetic candidate to spend a lot of time in the news, doing interviews, debates, etc. Most European election seasons are shorter! A new candidate’s nomination alone will generate a ton of media coverage and Americans will naturally be interested in learning more about them.
Raising money and setting up a ground operation will be tricky, but these operations are mostly effective on the margin. They might bump a candidate up a point or two but they’re unlikely to go beyond that. In fact, Hillary had double the money in 2016 compared to Trump and look where that got her. We expect a new candidate would lead to better performance fairly quickly such that the replacement would already outperform Biden even if he had a historically good ground-game performance.
What happens to campaign funds?
Biden campaign funds can be used by other candidates
There is flexibility in where Biden campaign funding could go. “Even if Biden is not the nominee, he would have the authority to direct his campaign treasurer on what to do with the remnant funds — whether that is a transfer in full to the DNC, to a super PAC supporting the new nominee, or parsed out up to contribution limits to various other campaigns with the balance to the DNC or a super PAC” - Steve Roberts (source).
A super PAC wouldn’t be able to coordinate with the official campaign but it could run ads, text campaigns, and most other things a campaign might want to do.
Most funding is in outside groups, not the Biden campaign
From The Hill: “Biden’s main reelection super PAC, Future Forward USA, reported nearly $92.4 million in cash on hand as of May 31. Outside groups supporting Biden have reported raising a total of $158.2 million so far this election cycle, according to the nonpartisan political money tracking nonprofit OpenSecrets, although that number is expected to jump when committees file their quarterly and July monthly reports to the FEC later this month.”
Outside groups could redirect their support to a new Democratic candidate. We’re already aware of over $10 million raised to support a replacement candidate and we expect there are many other efforts we have not heard of. It seems likely a new candidate, once nominated, would immediately have access to tens of millions with hundreds more on the way.
As mentioned in this New York Times piece, the Next Generation PAC is seeking to raise $50-100 million for a Biden replacement. Many major donors are withholding large donations until Biden steps down, some are publicly calling for him to step down, and others are calling for fellow donors to halt donations until he does so.
Money can make more of a difference for more popular, less well-known candidates
We expect that, even if a new candidate got zero use out of existing campaign funds (though that seems unlikely), they would have a better chance of beating Trump than Biden does. The truth is that political persuasion work is hard and extremely costly. At best, existing funds could boost Biden a point or two in key states if used well, but this is almost certainly insufficient to make a decisive difference in outcomes. Remember: Clinton spent twice as much as Trump in 2016.
A dollar spent on an alternate campaign will go far further than one spent on Biden. Voters have made up their minds on Biden and Trump already (they don’t like them), and voters are going to be much more open to hearing about a new candidate.
How would a new candidate be chosen? Is there a democratic option?
Biden won the Democratic primary, so would another Democratic nominee be considered the undemocratic choice of Democratic elites, making them illegitimate and unpopular? After all, democratic primary processes were adopted in the first place because people disliked the undemocratic back-room deals that were used to pick nominees.
That’s an understandable concern, but we expect the impacts to be minor, at least if Democrats handle a replacement tactfully. That’s because:
Democrats could run democratic “mini primary” elections to choose a replacement candidate.
Representative James Clyburn, an influential democrat, stated that, if Biden steps aside, he thinks “we’re going to have a mini primary leading into the convention [...] You can actually fashion the process that’s already in place to make it a mini primary, and I would support that, absolutely.”
Ezra Klein has a podcast episode going into detail about how a replacement could be chosen based on historical precedent.
Democrats could choose a new candidate based on who performs best in public polling. Though this wouldn’t be a conventional democratic process, it would still reflect the will of the public.
Many pollsters, including ones commissioned by Democrats, have been carrying out polls to understand how Biden’s support compares to that of alternatives.
52% of Americans think Biden should step down, so it would be easy, truthful, and democratic to explain why he’s stepping down: because that’s what the American public wants.
Americans who have a principled concern for democratic legitimacy will probably vote for the Democratic candidate regardless of who it is. Trump isn’t exactly the pro-democracy candidate.
Wouldn’t Biden be fine, if not for Democratic infighting?
The fact that the NY Times editorial board, most of left-leaning Twitter, Nate Silver, several Congressmembers, and many other top liberal institutions have called for Biden to step down will be harmful if Biden remains the candidate. If Biden stays in, Trump supporters will have an excellent message ready in October: “Biden’s own party thinks he’s too old to be president”.
That said:
Since there’s already been so many calls for Biden to step down, a few more probably won’t make a big difference for how Biden looks to voters. Republicans can already run basically the same attack ads either way. However, the more Democrat politicians call for Biden to step down, the likelier it becomes.
It’s hard to say if this was the right move by them, but, in the end, you can be angry that Biden’s party disowned him but you have to face the fact that there’s no way to take those comments back. The only move from here is to replace Biden with someone more viable who doesn’t suffer from this baggage.
If you’d prefer, you can specifically ask your representatives to privately advise Biden to step down. On the other hand, public calls might encourage more representatives to join the calls for Biden to step down.
Trump is the one that should drop out. Why aren’t you calling for that?
Of course Trump should drop out! Unfortunately, he won’t listen to us. But, we Democrats and anti-Trumpers, can affect whether we nominate a candidate who has the best chance of beating Trump.
The debate was just one senior moment…
What matters for beating Trump is what voters think. A growing majority of Americans believe Biden is too old. According to CNN, 73% of voters believe Biden doesn’t have the mental health to be president (compared to 65% pre-debate) and 72% of voters don’t think Biden should be running (compared to 63% pre-debate). At this point, only 29% of swing voters think Biden should stay in the race.
Regardless of whether Biden can sometimes perform, it’s inevitable he’ll have more ‘senior moments.’ More clips will be shared of him looking frail and confused, and we will lack a candidate who can stand up for themselves and actually confront Trump. We can’t afford to have a candidate who can do nothing but damage control until November.
Now, ready to call?
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Their mean squared error is around ⅔ that of public polling averages, and public polling averages do not increase the predictive accuracy of Open Labs' polls.
Thank you for this. I just embedded this post in my own post today, which is making the same argument, although not nearly as well as you have here.
Just called my senators - hope their lines are full! This is a great summary -the FAQs are excellent and I will be using these talking points.