Sarah Longwell says “double-haters” will decide the election
During his term in office, Donald Trump lied more than any American president in history. He threatened nuclear war, called neo-Nazis “very fine people”, mismanaged a pandemic and incited an insurrection at the Capitol. Yet he is still polling roughly evenly with President Joe Biden. Who wins in November—and by what margin—will be determined by what I call “double-haters”: those who are sceptical of both Mr Trump and Mr Biden.
I hold weekly focus groups with voters, and I hear from double-haters all the time. They tend to skew moderate, educated and suburban. They are overrepresented in swing states, especially the critical “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. The coarseness and dysfunction of politics frustrates them and their feelings on 2024 can be summed up by what one voter told me recently: “It’s actually a very disgusting choice.”