ELECTION 2020
Proof that Trump is in Trouble
This article can be found in my “Political Analysis” section.
I recently wrote an article called “Trump is in Trouble” in which I analyzed Trump’s rallies in Tulsa and Phoenix. I explained why the arguments and strategies he’s using are much weaker than his arguments in 2016. You can check that out here:
But can we prove that Trump’s approach — and the current crisis — are hurting his re-election chances? Let’s look at some polls.
Public Perception of COVID-19
Let’s start with how people are feeling about the current situation. We’ll look at polls from the website FiveThirtyEight.
As of June 28th, 65% of people are “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about catching COVID-19; a staggering 84.6% of people are “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about the economy.
People are pessimistic, and when people believe a situation is bad, they likely don’t want to keep the status quo. People want to make a change — in this case, that translates to electing a new president.
There’s evidence that people’s discontent is translating to disapproval of President Trump. Overall, 40.9% of people approve of Trump’s response while 55.8% disapprove. That’s almost a 15% differential, which is cause for worry for the Trump campaign.
More specifically, 82.7% of Republicans and 10.9% of Democrats approve of Trump’s response. That’s not surprising — a Republican president will have support from Republicans and dissent from Democrats.
Here’s what’s interesting: only 36.2% of Independent voters support Trump’s response. Independent voters (a.k.a. “swing” voters) are the key to getting across the finish line and winning an election. If only 36.2% of independents support Trump’s response, then Trump may struggle to get the swing voters he needs. That doesn’t bode well for him.
So how is Trump polling overall?
National Polling
The election website Real Clear Politics has recorded 146 national polls between President Trump and Former Vice President Joe Biden from March 2019 to the present. Trump was winning in 4 of those polls (the most recent being in February) and 3 polls were tied (the most recent being in April).
Joe Biden has been leading in the other 139 polls.
Real Clear Politics calculates a poll average (the “RCP average”) based on the 6 most recent polls. From January up through May, Biden has been 4–6% ahead of Trump, according to the RCP average. However, Biden’s lead has grown this month, having reached 10.2% on June 23rd. Biden currently leads Trump by 9.2% (as of June 28th).
That’s a strong lead. It’s worth noting that as COVID-19 has gotten worse this month (we’re seeing record numbers of daily cases), Trump has been polling worse. This aligns with what I said above — people’s dissatisfaction with the crisis is translating to dissatisfaction with Trump. (I discuss the US response to COVID-19 in detail here if you want more specifics).
For context, consider Trump vs. Hillary Clinton in 2016. The RCP average showed that Clinton’s lead over Trump fluctuated between 0–7% after May (on the election day, Clinton led by 3.2%). Clinton did have an 11% lead briefly in March, but that quickly went down. Clinton was leading Trump then, and now Biden is beating Trump by a larger margin. That’s on top of the pandemic, the recession, and social unrest — all of which will likely hurt Trump’s approval rating more.
The odds aren’t in Trump’s favor. Biden seems to be the favorite to win.
State by State Polls
However, Trump defeated Clinton even when he was behind in the national polls — he lost the popular vote but won the electoral college. To unravel that mystery, we need to look at state-level polls.
In 2016, Trump won the right swing states to win the electoral college. I explain how you can win the electoral college without the popular vote in detail below:
Anyway, we need to consider this election state-by-state. The states that won Trump the 2016 election were the “Rust-Belt” states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. “Rust-belt” refers to the fact that these states used to be manufacturing hubs, but these jobs have been lost in the past few decades (Trump blamed this on our trade deals, but there might be more to it than that). Thus, domestic industries “rusted out.”
Anyway, those 4 states have lots of former factory workers who lost their jobs. So Trump came in and said, “I’ll bring back your jobs and protect US industry.” He didn’t actually end up doing that, but he claimed that he would.
Now, however, Trump isn’t talking as much about bringing back jobs. In fact, he claims that he’s already brought back the jobs (that’s not completely true — more jobs have been outsourced during Trump’s tenure). I discuss Trump’s arguments and talking points more in the “Trump is in Trouble” article.
Anyway, how’s he doing in the rust-belt now? Well, Real Clear Politics gives polls from the last few weeks for Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. It also gives data on Florida and North Carolina — these were two key swing states that Trump won in 2016, so I’ll throw those in as well.
Below, I take the averages of all the recent polls by state. I also provide the number of polls conducted in each state. All these polls were conducted after June 16.
Biden is leading in all these states. However, I will say that this isn’t enough to count Trump out. Some of Biden’s leads in these states — particularly North Carolina and Ohio — are pretty small. Actually, in 2016, Trump was behind in some swing states and ended up winning in upsets.
However, the fact that Biden is leading by sizable margins in Florida and Michigan is troubling for Trump. Florida is a prominent swing state (as it has 29 electoral votes — pretty large) and Michigan is another important swing state as it has a good representation of blue-collar factory workers. The fact that Trump is losing here could be indicative of a pattern — maybe these working-class voters aren’t excited by Trump the way they were in 2016.
Anyway, nothing is certain with polls, but these state-level polls don’t indicate any certainty for Trump.
Conclusion
Nothing is set in stone — polls are always changing, the pandemic could get better, the list goes on. Not to mention that Joe Biden is not a particularly strong debater, meaning that Trump could gain an edge in the fall when the Presidential Debates start. I discuss Biden’s weaknesses in debates below:
However, right now, the polls show that Biden is getting more support, and his support could be dispersed throughout the states in the right way to hand him a victory. If Trump wants to win, he has to talk about issues that voters want to hear about, rather than drone on about confederate statues and West Point salutes.
Remember to Stay Cynical.
