Live By the Polls. Die By the Polls.

Donald Trump leads Joe Biden by ten points in the latest ABC/Washington Post poll. Even the Washington Post calls their poll “an outlier.” Trump has never run that far ahead of Biden in any poll ever, nor in the 2020 election.

Some say this poll is maliciously designed to embolden GOP support for Trump. Some say this poll is maliciously designed to force Joe Biden from the race. I say never think malicious when incompetence is usually the answer.

It is a bad poll.

What ABC News and the Washington Post are doing with the poll, however, is telling.

While dismissing their own poll, they are not so much making the case that Trump will win as they are making the case that things are so bad for Joe Biden that something needs to change.

The NBC News poll is having the same effect. The media is collectively sounding the red alert that Biden really is vulnerable, even to Trump. Democrats headed into 2024 need to know things are far worse than MSNBC tells them, and, in their bubble, they may be surprised to learn Trump can win.

On the Republican side, Trump remains dominant and the favorite.

DeSantis supporters are increasingly convinced the polls are wrong, malicious, bad, or trying to suppress the vote. I, too, think many Republicans are telling pollsters where their hearts are (with Trump) and not where their heads are (moving on).

But I also think it is notable that DeSantis isn’t moving the needle nationally right now and is ceding New Hampshire while he focuses on Iowa.

Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz are Iowa's last three consecutive winners. None went on to be the nominee. DeSantis supporters say that this time is different because Trump is pretty much the incumbent. So, Trump losing Iowa will resonate.

That’s a persuasive case, but if Trump loses in Iowa, he’s got New Hampshire and South Carolina after that.

The truth is, at this point, even a lot of consolidation will not matter. If Burgum, Hutchinson, Hurd, Christie, Pence, and Scott all got out of the race, that might free up ten percentage points. But, at least, it would allow more focus on DeSantis, Haley, and Ramaswamy — the latter still seemingly a proxy for Trump.

The other guys are not getting out yet, though. Pence and Scott are focused on Iowa and will probably stay in through Iowa. Christie is focused on New Hampshire and probably stays in till then.

But the reality is a single-state strategy does not help any of these candidates. Thinking a big bounce out of Iowa or New Hampshire really shakes things up against Trump is just unlikely when one person wins Iowa and another wins New Hampshire. It certainly signals greater vulnerabilities for Trump. But the reality is Trump leads in both those states now, too. He does not have to raise as much as the others because the others refuse to attack him (Christie excepted), and the base knows him.

The candidates all have a chance this coming week to shine once more at a GOP debate. Haley got her momentum from the last debate. Nationally, polls have not reflected it, but in Iowa and New Hampshire, the state polls do. DeSantis has a chance to rebound and lead. They’ll all be without Trump, allowing them to stand up and be seen and heard.

The only thing for certain right now is Joe Biden really is in trouble and a growing body of data internal to the Democrats suggests he needs to get out.

One last point — Trump and his campaign team said they were pivoting to focus on Biden and the general election, thinking they have the primary in the bag. But over the weekend, they started ramping up their attacks on DeSantis again in Iowa. Remember that the private polls we never see are far more detailed and accurate than the public polling we do see. So they must be seeing something.