US Elections: Why Donald Trump Could Win Against All Odds

Analysis

The fear of déjà vu: why Trump can still do it

Almost two weeks before the election, everything points to a victory for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Or not? The memory of 2016 keeps many Democrats sleeping.

This calls into question whether the numbers are correct. That agonizing feeling that things weren’t going well after all. This bad memory of 2016, when everything was prepared for the victory celebration and the shock was even greater at the end. Those sensitivities are troubling many Democratic supporters just two weeks before the US presidential election.

The prospects are optimistic. Almost all indicators indicate that Joe Biden will win clearly, possibly even overwhelmingly, against Donald Trump. In national polls, he is 10 percentage points and more ahead of Trump. It leads in most of the decisive states, albeit by a narrow margin.

The stability of the surveys is noted. In 2016 they were a constant rise and fall, this year it seems that opinions have been made. The forecasts, which take into account other parameters besides the polls, also see Biden clearly ahead. In Nate Silver’s “538” model, which simulates 40,000 possible election results, you have an 87 percent chance of winning.

The surveys themselves are bad

Joe Biden hardly has to do anything about it. You can sit back and watch your opponent dismantle. Donald Trump’s erratic behavior, for example when he insults immunologist Anthony Fauci and belittles the crown pandemic despite his own illness, drives even Republicans to despair.

There are increasing indications that your campaign is on standby. For example, the president has to campaign in Arizona, Georgia and Iowa, where he won relatively clearly four years ago. This is a sure sign that polls taken by your campaign team’s pollsters look bad too.

Trump runs out of money for this. His team had to cancel television advertising time in several undecided states because they couldn’t be paid. According to a Financial Times poll, even economic education, supposedly Trump’s greatest asset, is no longer an asset to a significant proportion of Americans.

Joe Biden offers almost no targets either, which is why the right-wing media is trying to provoke a pseudo scandal about the corrupt machinations of his son Hunter Biden. The story is so dubious that two “New York Post” revolver journalists who participated in the “inauguration” refused to defend their names.

Nothing is normal

There are other reasons why Trump’s re-election is in grave jeopardy. This includes efforts by Republicans to push for the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The prospect of a strong right-wing majority in court is likely to mobilize left-wing Democrats who had previously distrusted moderate Biden.

Joe Biden couldn’t lose a normal election in a functioning democracy. But America is a dysfunctional democracy and nothing is normal in the days of Donald Trump. That’s why Democrats are concerned about déjà vu, a repeat of 2016 when Hillary Clinton was passed the finish line.

“Indeed a tie”

Bill Bole, a politician from the major swing state of Pennsylvania, summed up the sentiments of many Democrats in the “Washington Post” that he felt caught “between unbridled optimism and naked fear.” “Because of 2016, people are still being cautious,” said Lavora Barnes, leader of the Democratic Party in Michigan.

This also applies to Joe Biden’s entourage. Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon sent a memo on Saturday with an urgent warning: “National polls say very little about the path to 270 electoral votes.” These are necessary for victory, but in some important states there is a “de facto tie.”

New registered voters

This reflects a suspicion that worries Democrats: There could be a “hidden” pool of Trump voters that, as in 2016, is not captured by polls. There are signs of this: According to the New York Times, Republicans were able to register additional voters in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

This allowed them to narrow the gap with the Democrats in these states arguably central to the election outcome. The number of registered voters says little about the election itself, and one aspect is often overlooked: In the deeply divided United States, more and more people are registering as “nonpartisan.”

Out of any norm

Still, one wonders: Are the polls wrong again? This assumption is unfair because the polls weren’t that bad four years ago, at least at the national level. However, many American pollsters admit that the segment of white voters with no college education was not sufficiently covered.

Some institutes have now given it more weight, but not all. But the biggest reason the president of the United States is expected to have another surprise is himself: Donald Trump is beyond any norm. The usual criteria by which political achievement can be measured do not apply to him. Or they even turn upside down.

When Watson’s employee, Johann Aeschlimann, visited a Trump rally in Florida, the president received the biggest applause when he declared, “I am not a politician.” Actually, this is not a joke, but the secret of its success. Trump is selling himself as an anti-politician, an image he was able to preserve after nearly four years in power.

Long long time

That is why his fans ignore all the failures, the failure in the crown crisis, the electoral promises that were not kept, the corruption, the endless lies, the hate speech on Twitter. In reality, they are changing these things, because Donald Trump promises them what counts more than anything else: ensuring white supremacy in America.

Many Democrats are alarmed that Trump has repeatedly indicated that he would not accept a loss to Biden. And he is ready to prevent them with all manner of machinations, for example declaring votes by mail invalid or “patrolling” Trump supporters in front of polling stations in democratic strongholds.

A lot can still happen before Election Day. “We don’t know what kind of madness Trump will unleash,” activist Matt Bennett told Politico. Every day is a week and every week a month: “The time until November 3 will feel long.” Joe Biden is still the favorite despite everything, but Trump is also still Trump.