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JUST MORE than two weeks until Election Day, November 3, the outlook is bleak for President Donald Trump. Frankly, that’s an understatement.
Forget for a couple of minutes the individual polls in key states and the relatively meaningless national polls.
Instead, let’s evaluate the numbers at RealClearPolitics.com, which aggregates data in a sophisticated way to account for outliers.
Look at the numbers
As of this writing, Joe Biden is up 7.2 percentage points in Michigan. It is ahead by 7 percentage points in Pennsylvania. And it’s at the top by 6.3 percentage points in Wisconsin.
Trump triumphed in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 80,000 votes combined in 2016. Hardly anyone anticipated those surprises, and that’s how he got to where he is.
If Biden keeps these non-insubstantial clues and the Scranton native prevails in each one, he will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States in January.
But there is more. That shallow shot assumes that Trump will double his performance in every state where he last won. Notably, Biden is also hot on his heels on a handful of those.
RealClearPolitics gives the Democrat an advantage of about three percentage points in North Carolina and Florida and has him a little ahead in Iowa, Ohio and Georgia.
Because his party’s platform aspects go against the mainstream in the last three battlefields, I doubt Joe Biden will win any of them. However, if Florida were to win, Donald Trump’s path to a second term would become infinitely more difficult to navigate.
Biden faces an uphill fight in Florida. However, the management’s handling of Covid-19 has made victory a genuine possibility. The “sunshine state” is teeming with retirees.
They went for Trump over Hillary Clinton by a remarkable 17 percentage points. Opinion polls from that cohort currently show the incumbent in a tie with his rival.
The deeper dives attribute that steep drop in support in large part to the widespread perception among older Americans that Trump betrayed their trust by denying the magnitude of the pandemic when he knew how serious the danger it posed, especially to them.
Time to call him?
Trump is in serious trouble. Nonetheless, various arguments have been put forward to counter this seemingly unassailable narrative about the trajectory of the campaign.
First, Trump supporters suggest that the states Clinton won could go down the Republican column. Minnesota is mentioned often. His dreams of turning it red, perhaps reinforced by the riots and looting in the wake of George Floyd’s tragic and unnecessary death in Minneapolis, have been dissipated.
RealClearPolitics has cut Trump by 6.6% and the millions that the president planned to spend on advertising in his major media markets have been withdrawn.
Even in a small, though potentially pivotal, New Hampshire, where Clinton got her four Electoral College votes by a slim majority of 3,000 votes, thanks to the concerted outreach of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and his transplant allies from the Eastern Massachusetts living in the southern part of the state – it was thought that was up for grabs. It is not. Polls consistently show Biden ahead by double digits.
Second, there are rumored “quiet”, “shy” or “hidden” Trump voters that the polls are not capturing. Certainly, there are some people in the US who will vote for Trump, but are reluctant to admit it publicly for a number of reasons that are generally related to their professional ambitions or social circles.
How numerous are they is the central question? Given the margins of the polls and the reality that pollsters use rigorous, scientific, and nuanced methodologies, the claim that the data could be so wildly inaccurate is akin to a conspiracy theory.
Third is the idea that Joe Biden will have a moment, a collapse of epic proportions that will breed sincere and legitimate doubts about his ability to be commander-in-chief. Therefore, many will decide to stay with the “devil they know”.
If Biden manages to escape the upcoming debate without making a big mistake, Republicans’ hopes in this regard will likely be dashed. The quite different way this campaign has been run due to the coronavirus has worked in Biden’s favor. It is not expected to be ubiquitous.
Along a similar vein, some wonder if newly unearthed emails to Hunter Biden from a Ukrainian businessman thanking him for allegedly arranging meetings with his then vice president father could drastically alter the contours of the contest. I wouldn’t bet on that.
Has the voter had enough?
The bottom line commonly floated by those who continue to think that Trump could actually win emanates from his fervent opponents. In short, Trump will steal the election, effectively preventing voting by mail or suppressing the participation of people of color, or through the Supreme Court.
It may be misplaced, but I still have faith in the strong institutions of America and I think the fears in this regard are overblown. I honestly cannot imagine such a scenario.
Two factors militate against all this. First is that Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton. Many did not vote to elect Donald Trump; they voted to prevent the former first lady from returning to the White House.
For countless, complicated, and quite unfair reasons, Clinton was widely despised. Biden, on the other hand, is widely respected by Americans of all stripes. There will be few personal votes against him.
Second, there is a sentiment that I suspect prevails among those who do not attend Trump’s rallies or feel that he is a putative dictator who poses an existential threat to our country. They may or may not have taken a chance on him four years ago.
My instinct is that enough of them have had enough of Donald Trump at this stage: enough of the toxic Tweets, enough of the aggressive, unworthy, and not even remotely presidential behavior in a prominent display in the first debate, and enough of the mockery and downplay of a crisis. unprecedented public health program that has devastated millions of families.
No news is bad news
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I’m reluctant to confidently predict the outcome in a terrible 2020 when weirdness has become the norm. That said, in my opinion, these last two considerations make Joe Biden cling more to the possibility of Donald Trump having a successful comeback.
I will not say that a fork is put in his presidency. That would be foolhardy. But as the race rolls into the home stretch, all the reliable indicators point to the same conclusion: Without a major stroke of luck, a political miracle so to speak, Trump is finished.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston attorney, professor of law at NUI Galway, and political columnist for TheJournal.ie.
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