I DON'T BELIEVE THAT USA TODAY POLL, BUT TRUMP SEEMS TO HAVE BECOME (SLIGHTLY) MORE POPULAR THIS YEAR

This seems alarming.

President Donald Trump, the first modern president to face impeachment during his first term in the White House, now leads his top Democratic rivals in his bid for a second, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds.

The national survey ... showed Trump defeating former Vice President Joe Biden by 3 percentage points, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by 5 points, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren by 8 points.

In hypothetical head-to-head contests, Trump also led South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg by 10 points and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg by 9.

All five Democrats still lead Trump in the Real Clear Politics polling averages, although the margins are now tiny for all except Biden and Sanders. And yet this poll shows Trump beating all of these rivals soundly, just days after Fox and Quinnipiac showed all of them ahead of Trump, in many cases by large margins. What's up with this poll?

I think I see an explanation.

An unnamed third-party candidate received between 11% and 15% in the head-to-head contests – a factor that could determine who wins the White House.

"We know third-party candidates have minimal chance to win a presidential election but a high probability to make a difference in a state's outcome," said David Paleologos, director of Suffolk's Political Research Center. "Every ballot has third-party candidates who receive critical votes. When you give voters more than two options for president, you see how it impacts the major two parties."

Third-party candidates never win presidential elections -- in fact, no third-party candidate has won even a single state in the last half century. And only one third-party candidate -- Ross Perot, an oddly telegenic billionaire -- has cracked double digits in the past half century. And yet this poll is projecting 11% to 15% for an unnamed third-party candidate.

In 2016, Gary Johnson got 3.28% of the vote; Jill Stein got 1.07%. In 2000, Ralph Nader got 2.74% of the vote. Perot's percentage in 1996 was 8.40%, a decline from his 18.91% in 1992. John Anderson got 6.61% of the vote in 1980.

George Wallace did win 13.53% of the vote (and five states) in 1968, but that was the consequence of what seemed to be a party schism; eventually, racist Democrats in the South simply switched to the GOP.

It's conceivable that Mike Bloomberg's personal wealth or Bernie Sanders's fundraising prowess would make a double-digit third-party run possible. But both seem committed to the Democratic primaries well past the point where they could drop out and mount an independent run. (And Bloomberg still hasn't cracked double digits among Democrats.) I still think Tulsi Gabbard will go indy, but she's only popular enough to be a Stein-level nuisance. That's bad enough, but she's not going to take 11% to 15% of the vote on a minor-party line. Neither is anyone else.

So I don't trust this poll. However, something's going on. Trump's approval rating is ticking up and disapproval rating ticking down in the FiveThirtyEight polling average (though not, oddly in the Real Clear Politics average, where it's steady). Disapproval of impeachment and removal from office now exceeds approval (if barely) in the RCP average, while support has declined in the FiveThirtyEight average.

I don't think impeachment is a bust. It's still polling at 46%-47% support. However, I think Trump is becoming (somewhat) more popular, and it's a trend that might predate the Ukraine scandal.

Look at these two sets of numbers:



The percentage of people who think Trump deserves reelection is inching up in both polls; in the NPR/PBS/Marist poll, the increase seems to have started well before we heard about the Ukraine whistleblower. It's possible that the Trump campaign's advertising blitz -- which hasn't been matched by a similar quantity of Democratic anti-Trump ads -- is having an effect. Trump's ads say, in effect, Here's what I've accomplished, here's why the Establishment hates me, here's why it's good that I act like an asshole. I think they're resonating.

But they're resonating with only a minority of the country. You'll notice that in every poll listed above, anti-Trump beats Trump by double digits. Also notice that there's a limit to Trump's numbers even in that USA Today/Suffolk poll:

Trump's standing remained remarkably steady regardless of his opponent, at 45% against Warren, 44% against Biden and Sanders, and 43% against Buttigieg and Bloomberg. That could be both good news and bad for him: A sign of the solidity of his support, but also an indication that he has a ceiling.

A majority of Americans want to be rid of Trump. Democrats need to start anti-Trump advertising now to reinforce that message. Then they need to persuade the country that voting for the Democratic nominee -- whoever it is -- is the way out of the Trump nightmare.

... ADDING: I wonder if the Democratic presidential candidates learned the wrong lesson from 2018. Like the Democrats who won seats in the midterms, the presidential candidates seem to want to talk about health care or college affordability or gun control rather than Trump. That made sense in the midterms -- but unlike the midterm candidates, whichever Democrat wins the presidential nomination will be running against Trump. So sure, talk about the issues. But don't tiptoe around Trump -- his presidency is an issue, too.