Don't worry about Biden's ad. Voters are locked in.

Republicans are going to vote for Trump.
Most Democrats will vote for the Democratic alternative.

It isn't about the message.

     "I don't disagree with your view that hardcore Trump supporters will interpret this ad the way you describe. I just don't think it matters."

          Peter Lemieux, Politics by the Numbers

Peter Lemieux is a political scientist from Cambridge, Massachusetts who has a firmly quantitative understanding of political science. He looked at this blog's analysis of the Biden ad that showed European leaders snickering over Trump, an ad that I wrote will feed the sense of resentment of people in flyover swing states. It was a bad ad, I wrote yesterday and the day before.

It won't change votes, he wrote me. "Trump's core voters will cast ballots for him no matter what. Trump's supporters are unmovable. His opponents are as well."

Peter Lemieux writes a website, https://www.politicsbythenumbers.org. He was a college classmate who then went on to get a Ph.D. from MIT. He taught there and at the University of Rochester. His site is free of pretty graphics and photos and  references to character archetypes and intended and unintended messages. It is a place of graphs, charts, and numbers, built on hard data about polls and ultimate voter behavior.

This blog presumes that people are attracted by some things and not others, that on the margin--especially with people who are lightly informed and mostly unengaged with politics--message matters. Maybe that is the wrong way to look a politics. Peter Lemieux says that swing voters won't see the ad, and they wouldn't care about it if they did.

Guest Post by Peter Lemieux

Peter Lemieux

"We are no longer living in a world, if we ever did, where substantial numbers of voters can be persuaded to switch parties and candidates. Trump's approval and disapproval rates are largely impervious to events. Since the end of the government shutdown, his approval rating has stayed at 42% and his disapproval rating at 53%. Click: fivethirtyeight

The shutdown had serious economic consequences for many Americans including government employees and those whose jobs depend on them. Impeachment won't have the same effect.

There is a group of polling respondents who eschew the "strongly" approve or disapprove answers and might be persuadable.  In a recent Morning Consult/Politico poll, for instance, we have 23% "strongly approve;" 17% "somewhat approve;" 12% "somewhat disapprove;" and a whopping 44% who choose "strongly disapprove." Click: politico

Perhaps that 29% who give "somewhat" responses might be persuadable, but I think many of them are just uncomfortable committing to the "strongly" moniker.

To me, the electorate breaks down as:

30-35% will definitely vote for Trump
45-50% will definitely not vote for Trump
15-25% might or might not vote for Trump

I would argue that few of the people in that 15-25% are the sort who will react to the Biden ad in the ways Peter Sage describes. Nearly all of those people are in the 30-35% definitely Trumpist category. In fact, given that independents and uncertain voters pay less attention to politics, most of them will never see this ad."