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You can take a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty view of this new NYT poll of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Hampshire. Glass half full: Trump’s “law and order” message *does* appear to be working to some degree. In June, the last time the Times polled Wisconsin, Biden led by 11. Today he leads by just five. More to the point, across all four states more people than not think he’s been too soft on the droogs burning down businesses in Kenosha, among other places.

By a 20-point margin, 53 to 33, voters over 65 in the four states said the former vice president had not done enough to denounce rioting. And 70 percent of these same voters said crime was a “major problem” in the country…

And there are signs that Mr. Trump’s barrage against Mr. Biden on the issue of policing, while inaccurate, has been effective: 44 percent of those surveyed in the four states said he supported defunding the police while only 39 percent said he was not in favor of doing so, which the former vice president has said repeatedly.

Among all Wisconsin voters, 56 percent say Biden hasn’t done enough to denounce the rioting versus just 31 percent who say he has. (Even among Democrats, 28 percent think he hasn’t done enough.) The numbers are similar in Minnesota at 54/35. Biden has said repeatedly that he doesn’t want to defund the police and he’s made several on-camera statements condemning the violence over the past few weeks, but that message isn’t getting through. And it’s helping to keep Trump close.

Glass half empty: Even so, Biden leads in all four states by an average of six points. In none of those states does Trump reach 44 percent, an ominous ceiling in a race with no serious third-party factor. Despite voters’ unhappiness with Biden for not condemning rioting strongly enough, he actually leads Trump in Minnesota and Wisconsin on the questions of who’d do a better job on “law and order” (48/47) and handling violent crime (48/46). How can that be?

“That’s probably in part because they think Biden’s better at unifying the country, handling protests, and think Trump encourages violence,” reasons the Times’s Nate Cohn. Indeed, Biden leads Trump big on who’d be better at handling race relations (56/37), unifying America (53/38), and handling protests (51/42). And across Wisconsin, despite the chaos in Kenosha, voters still have a favorable view on balance of Black Lives Matter (49/43). Trump’s view of law and order boils down to “toughness”: Who’s more likely to crack down hard on looters, him or Sleepy Joe? The electorate’s view of law and order seems to be more complicated: Who’s more likely to lower the cultural and political temperature such that violence will be less likely to happen? For example:

Scott Lacko, a 55-year-old from the northern Wisconsin community of Eagle River, backed Mr. Trump in 2016 but will be voting for Mr. Biden this fall. The riots concern him deeply; he argued that Black people shot by police would have been spared had they followed instructions and said that “it’s sad to see these individuals continue to be placed on a pedestal.” But he said that Mr. Trump’s law-and-order push had not won him over.

The president, Mr. Lacko said, cannot be trusted to act in anyone’s interest but his own. He reflected a majority of Wisconsin voters in seeing Mr. Biden as a unifier of the country: 52 percent said they trusted him more to bring people together, compared with 39 percent for Mr. Trump.

“Trump certainly tries to take advantage of the situation and muddy the water,” he said. “I may not have agreed with some of the things Biden said, but at least he’s trying to bring people together and find some way through it.”

Seniors are another case in point. As noted above, a clear majority of them think Biden’s been too soft on rioting. And yet, per the Times, “Biden enjoys a 12-point lead, 52 to 40, among people 65 and older across the four states and, by overwhelming numbers, they say he would do a better job than Mr. Trump unifying the country, handling race relations and addressing the pandemic.” Winning the 65+ crowd, traditionally a Republican bloc, would all but guarantee Biden the presidency. And here he is with a double-digit lead among them in a bunch of battlegrounds *despite* seniors’ misgivings about his resolve in fighting crime. That’s a withering commentary on their trust in Trump.

read more here: https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2020/09/12/four-swing-states-voters-believe-biden-wants-defund-police-hasnt-done-enough-condemn-rioting/