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DEBATE
Politics in 2020 is not about facts, but about emotions.
External comments: This is a discussion article. Analysis and position are the author’s.
In both Norway and the United States, most people take it for granted that the Democrats and Joe Biden will win the presidential election on November 3. Especially after Biden chose California attorney and senator Kamala Harris, with her mother from India and her father from Jamaica, as his vice presidential candidate.
But despite a successful National Assembly of Democrats: Donald J. Trump is more likely to be re-elected president.
The latest measurements shows Trump is doing better in crucial tip states now than he was against Hillary Clinton at the same time in 2016: on an average of polls in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and Arizona, since August, Trump surpasses the level at which he was against Clinton. And last week, the well-covered Republicans’ national convention was held, where Trump had daily White House television reports.
The electoral campaign is only now beginning.
In early August, Biden was clearly leading in Minnesota, the state where George Floyd was killed by police in May. But the last two measurements there now show a sudden draw.
Even Clinton won Minnesota in 2016, when it received the state’s 10 electoral votes. Thus, she ended up with 232 of the 270 needed in the Electoral College to become president. If Biden doesn’t win Minnesota, it won’t help even if she manages to turn her own home state of Pennsylvania (20) and neighboring Ohio (18) back to the Democrats. For Florida, Democrats should be hopeless, as Al Gore learned in 2000.
The worst starting point of all
Many are referring to national polls that show Biden “x number” percent “ahead” of Trump. But in 2016, Clinton received 2.2 percent and 2.9 million votes more than Trump.
However, he lost the presidency, since what decides is the number of electoral votes, a similar system that Norway has with the representatives of the counties in the parliamentary elections. Most likely, Biden will also win in number of votes this year. But it will take much more to win entire states, as well as 28 electoral votes from Trump.
In 2018, Democrats won the congressional midterm elections talking less about Trump and more about the individual voter, senior editor Ronald Brownstein noted in The Atlantic. This year’s national meeting, however, had a lot to do with morality and guilt over COVID-19, but less with Biden’s financial plan. Thus, Trump can now go on the offensive in the economic and labor debate.
As early as early August, Trump led in important tip states in the Midwest, 42 percent to 39 percent. In this region, so-called white voters are becoming important: 50 percent of them responded in this poll that they would vote for Trump; only 34 percent wanted Biden.
A CNN poll on Aug. 17 showed Trump’s popularity on the rise: White voters nationwide clearly support Trump / Pence (53 percent) over Biden / Harris (43 percent). In a poll conducted a couple of weeks ago, up to 47 percent of white women said they preferred Trump; 44 percent would vote for Biden.
This should not surprise us: In 2016, white women actually chose Trump over Hillary Clinton. Trump’s white voters have a lot to defend: it will be important that he is re-elected.
Confirm the porn star claim
Since the Reagan era, I’ve known my friend Matt, who works for an automobile tire company in Missouri. Now she will also vote Democrats in keeping with the tradition of her white working class family. As he writes: “America is not the way it used to be, and Trump is as small a dictator as a democracy can allow … ‘Go Joe Biden 2020’: We need a clear vision to move this country forward in a positive direction! »
And that is correct that Biden now scores 13 percent higher on the popularity index (“favorability”) than Trump. But Clinton actually had an advantage of as much as 18.5 percent in a similar poll on August 24, 2016.
Election gurus like Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight claimed in August that Biden will win in 73 out of 100 cases. But the same thing they said in 2016 about Clinton. Less deceptive are the gamblers: They now give about 50-50 between Trump and Biden, after they gave Trump 36 percent in early August. State Brook University professor Helmut Norpoth has compared this year’s primary election to the results of previous elections: He believes Trump will now win the Electoral College by an even greater margin than in 2016.
Trump benefits that presidents since 1980 are generally re-elected. The exception is George Bush Sr., but first he had been vice president for eight years, giving him a total of 12 years in power. Republican presidents elected without a prior Republican presidency have been re-elected each time since Benjamin Harrison lost in 1892. Biden, therefore, fights against political gravity.
Respond to Trump’s attacks
Trump also has online trolls on his side: A Senate cross-party intelligence report, released in mid-August, concludes that key Trump individuals worked with Putin’s intelligence service to manipulate Clinton’s 2016 election coverage. The Senate Committee warns that Biden will be exposed for the same thing this fall. But even a scandal worse than Watergate is of no consequence.
Last week, the Trump campaign released three YouTube videos that undermine Biden – these have already become the most-viewed Biden videos ever, with more than 50 million views, more than the rest combined. Especially in tipped states, most voters will be exposed to more behaviors in Biden than in Trump’s belated reaction to covid-19, tax cuts for the separation of wealthy or racist children deprived of their parents at the border Mexican.
As we see in Hungary and Poland: Politics in 2020 is not about facts, but about emotions. Aristotle warned against democracy, as it can be easily manipulated: if certain demands are not made beforehand, “career-minded seducers will take it so far that people are even above the law.” A reelection of Trump will have even greater consequences than the 2016 election.
Biden still has a slim chance of winning on November 3. But then the challenges of realpolitik and communication must be taken seriously.
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