FiveThirtyEight’s top politics stories this week

[FiveThirtyEight]( Popular in Politics Thursday, July, 11, 2024 [1. What the Democrats doubting Biden have in common]( [What the Democrats doubting Biden have in common]( [President Joe Biden's debate performance]( last month was so bad it sparked a drastic reaction: calls for him to drop out of the presidential race in favor of a Democrat better equipped to defeat former President Donald Trump. In an extraordinary development, as of Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern, 10 Democratic members of Congress have either publicly called on Biden to drop out or [reportedly did so in a private meeting]( and haven't refuted the story. Another 37 have expressed concerns about Biden as the nominee but stopped short of saying he should drop out. (These numbers are based on [VoteHub's excellent tracker of Democrats' stances on Biden]( supplemented by reporting from ABC News.) [Read more]( [2. Why 538's forecast hasn't moved much post-debate]( [Why 538's forecast hasn't moved much post-debate]( According to [538's average]( former President Donald Trump's margin in national polls has grown by just about 2 percentage points since June 27, when President Joe Biden delivered a poor performance in the cycle's first presidential debate. Biden's current 2.1-point deficit is the worst position for a Democratic presidential candidate since early 2000, when then-Vice President Al Gore was badly lagging Texas Gov. George W. Bush, according to our retroactive polling average of that race. [Read more]( [3. Would Kamala Harris be a stronger candidate than Biden?]( [Would Kamala Harris be a stronger candidate than Biden?]( On Thursday, June 27, President Joe Biden had one of the worst debates for an incumbent president in recent memory. According to a [538/Ipsos poll]( conducted after the debate using Ipsos’s [KnowledgePanel]( the average debate watcher thought the president did “poor” (on a scale from “terrible” to “excellent”), and only 21 percent thought he performed best in the debate. By contrast, although former President Donald Trump turned in just an “about average” performance that included [numerous lies]( 60 percent of debate watchers told 538/Ipsos they thought he performed the best. And according to [538’s average]( Trump’s margin in national polls has increased by 2 percentage points since the debate. [Read more]( [4. What if Biden or Trump suddenly leaves the 2024 race?]( [What if Biden or Trump suddenly leaves the 2024 race?]( What would happen if a major-party candidate died or abruptly dropped out of the presidential race before Election Day? [Read more]( [5. It's not just vibes. Americans' perception of the economy has completely changed.]( [It's not just vibes. Americans' perception of the economy has completely changed.]( There's a question journalists, economists and President Joe Biden's campaign have been puzzling over for months: Why, when every traditional indicator is positive, are Americans so displeased with the economy? [Read more]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe](