In one of his final interviews as president, President Joe Biden made the audacious claim that he would have beaten President Donald Trump had Biden remained the Democratic nominee. As The Washington Post and others have noted, this is simply not true nor was it ever possible. For one, Vice President Kamala Harris fared better than Biden across every demographic group – and still lost.
By The Numbers:
Overall, Harris led Trump by three points in net favorability, while Biden trailed Trump by seven points on that measure. Her overall net favorability was a net nine points better than Biden’s favorability.
Harris performed eleven points better than Biden with men, younger voters, older voters, Democrats, and Hispanic voters. She performed nine points better than Biden with women and white voters. and seventeen points better than Biden with independents.
Harris’s net favorability was eleven points better than Biden’s favorability with women and non-college educated voters and eight points better with men.
The Bottom Line: No one can say for sure what would have happened had Biden not withdrawn; however, with numbers like these it’s hard to see what his path to victory would have been. It is even more confounding that Harris was unable to articulate what she’d have done differently than Biden. If the Democratic Party follows Biden in this type of denialism, they’re setting themselves up for an even longer time in the wilderness than they are already on track to suffer.
