Welcome to the online version of From the Political Bureauan evening newsletter featuring the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News Politics team from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki examines whether Virginia, which has drifted away from the Republican Party at the presidential level, could be competitive this fall. Plus, campaign manager Katherine Koretski and national political reporter Ben Kamisar explain why Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will probably not appear on the debate stage next week.
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Is Virginia actually playing for? Trump?
By Steve Kornacki
There are several storylines of national importance in the current Virginia primary. But when it comes to the presidential race this fall, the consensus has been that the Old Dominion will be tension-free.
The story of Virginia’s shift from the red redoubt to the safely blue state is a well-known one, played out by the Washington suburbs and Richmond and accelerated by the rise of Donald Trump. It looked like this:
And yet, even as Trump regains control of the Republican Party, two recent polls from Fox News and Roanoke College show him locked in a head-to-head matchup with the president. Joe Biden in Virginia. When several third-party candidates were included, Biden was ahead by 1 point in Fox’s poll and 2 points in Roanoke’s.
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This is clearly a limited sample, and while the Trump campaign is making noise about efforts to bring statehood into play, it has yet to demonstrate that it will back that conversation with full force.
But if these early numbers pointing to a tight race continue, the Electoral College fallout would be significant.
Right now, Trump’s clearest path to 270 electoral votes is to win back Georgia and Arizona and flip Nevada — all states with diverse populations where Trump’s electoral gains among nonwhite voters could give him a boost. But even if he picks up those three, he will likely still have to win back one of the three Big Ten states that Biden flipped in 2020: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, states with higher concentrations of white voters. But if Trump were to win Virginia, he could take back the White House without any of those northern states.
Of course, that’s a big if. Current polls provide a clear picture of why the state could be competitive. Biden’s approval is at 43% in the Fox poll and 35% in the Roanoke poll. And when respondents in the Roanoke survey were asked how they now view Trump’s four years as president, 44% rated them as “mostly good,” compared to just 25% who said the same about Biden’s term.
The breakthrough that Trump has made with non-white voters in the national polls can also be seen here. The Fox poll puts him at 25% among Black voters, up from the 10% the 2020 Virginia exit poll had him at. The state also has a significant population of Latinos and Asian Americans.
But when fall arrives, the picture may look different in Virginia. Trump himself remains deeply unpopular (a 55% unfavorable rating in the Fox poll).
And there is a higher concentration of college degrees among the state’s white adult population than the national average. Not only has this demographic group become increasingly Democratic of late, it has also been intensely anti-Trump, voting out at disproportionately high levels in non-presidential elections, motivated by any opportunity to express displeasure with the former president.
It’s a trend that could help Biden outperform his poll numbers in a state like Virginia.
Why RFK Jr. will probably not join Biden and Trump on the debate stage next week
By Katherine Koretski and Ben Kamisar
As Biden and Trump prepare for their first one-on-one showdown in nearly four years next week, there’s one wild card they likely won’t have to consider: a third candidate on stage.
It appears that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will not qualify for the CNN-hosted debate when the deadline passes this week. He has fallen short of the 15% polling threshold in at least four approved national polls, having reached that mark in only three so far.
But more importantly, Kennedy almost certainly won’t meet the network’s voting access criteria, because qualifying in enough states to win 270 electoral votes at this early point in the election calendar is a Herculean task for a candidate who doesn’t have a major party. And what’s more, Kennedy’s campaign hasn’t filed its ballot access requests at the pace needed to secure the ballot lines before the June 20 deadline — even though clear steps are being taken toward qualification at the next debate in the House. autumn.
That means Kennedy will almost certainly watch from the sidelines as Biden and Trump debate next Thursday, depriving the independent media of earned media coverage and a chance to take his long-running campaign to the next level. Instead, Kennedy appears poised to use his negligence to argue that the election was rigged against political outsiders. His campaign generated $100,000 in national TV advertising on the day of the debate.
Kennedy faces an uphill battle to gain access to ballots in all fifty states before November, but at a campaign event in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this weekend, he said he would “get out the vote across the country within four weeks.” will participate. ”
According to NBC News analysis and interviews with administration officials, the independent candidate has already qualified to appear on the ballot in nine states, accounting for 139 electoral votes. His campaign also says it has collected enough signatures to meet CNN’s demands, but in many cases the signatures have not been officially submitted for verification, a process that could take weeks (if not longer).
In some states, the windows to submit those signatures haven’t even opened yet. Therefore, the debate window is closing for Kennedy, pending any last-minute legal action by state bureaucrats.
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That’s all from The Politics Desk for now. If you have any feedback – like it or not – please email us at politicsnieuwsbrief@nbcuni.com
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
