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| Donald Trump and Joe Biden at the second Presidential debate on October 22nd, image from Newsweek |
If a meteorologist told you it was snowing, but you looked outside and saw it was sunny, would you believe him?
The science of meteorology is naturally much better now than when that adage was made, but it can still be used in reference to political polls for really the last decade. In 2012, national polling showed Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in a virtual tie nationally before Obama won comfortably with a 3.9% win. In 2014, polls showed a toss up in the Senate ahead of a Republican wave that saw the GOP gain nine seats. In 2016, well, you know. In 2018, polling was much better, but still had two huge misses in Florida's Senate and Governor's races.
Polling is an inexact science, which is doubly true in the Age of Donald Trump. While Joe Biden has been leading in nearly every poll, my estimation based on other factors paints a much different picture than what can be gleaned from just the polls. I held a similar view in 2016 and it turned out to be the correct view, so I'm doubling down this year and saying President Trump will be reelected.
To be clear, this is not a speculation of why people support Trump or Biden and not the other candidate. This is merely a reflection of what I'm seeing beyond the polls
Primary Results
One of the reasons I suspected a Trump victory in the offing the first time around was due to his performance in the primaries. Back then, he received a record 14 million votes in the Republican primary. Trump seemed to excite voters in a way that neither McCain nor Romney was able to. It was not that Trump was receiving those votes, it was that they were participating in the primaries specifically to vote for him as nearly 12 million more voters participated in the 2016 Republican primaries vs the 2012 edition.
In the full primary era, which is after 1976, no President has even received more votes in an uncontested primary in their second election. George Bush in 1992 received more primary votes than in 1988, but he was facing steep competition (for an incumbent President). Even popular Presidents like Reagan (17% decrease from 1980 to 1984), Clinton (a 7.5% decrease from 1992 in 1996), Bush (yes, he was popular among Republicans in 2004, but still saw a 35% decrease from 2000), and Obama (a 65% decrease in 2012 from 2008) all received fewer votes in their incumbent primary campaign and all four were reelected, all but one rather comfortably.
In 2020, Donald Trump bucked this trend in staggering fashion. He received over 18 million votes in this primary, a nearly 30% increase from his 2016 total. Given the environment this occurred in, this is beyond unprecedented. Incumbent Presidents put no effort into their primary campaigns normally and for the most part, Trump did not either outside of a few rallies here and there before the coronavirus lockdowns started. In such cases, voters simply do not turn up at a primary for an incumbent President because everyone knows the incumbent President will be re-nominated.
On top of this, eight states (Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada, New York, South Carolina, and Virginia) did not hold primaries in the first place as opposed to every state holding a caucus or primary in 2016. Slightly less than half of the primaries were held after the coronavirus lockdowns began as well. So despite people not having a reason to come out and vote since he was nominally unopposed, despite several states not having a primary at all, and despite the pandemic, Trump saw a 30% increase in primary votes in 2020 from 2016. There is simply no precedent for this because it's never happened in an uncontested primary before. It indicates that enthusiasm for Trump is still tremendous among Republicans, something that's not reflected in the polling (more on that later)
On the Democrat side, based on the first two primaries, Joe Biden should not even be the nominee. Biden finished 4th in Iowa and 5th in New Hampshire. He then finished a distant second in Nevada before finally breaking through in South Carolina and then outperforming expectations on Super Tuesday. To put it bluntly, Democrat leaders panicked when Bernie Sanders attained front runner status after winning New Hampshire and Nevada.
Other ostensibly moderate candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar were forced out in between South Carolina and Super Tuesday, leaving the moderate wing solely to Biden while the progressive wing was still split between Elizabeth Warren and Sanders. How much of this influenced the results of Super Tuesday cannot be quantified, but it had to have been substantial since despite all of this happening in a matter of 48 hours, Klobuchar and Buttigieg received less than a combined 10% in a given Super Tuesday race after averaging a combined 20-35% in the previous four races.
This left Biden with the frontrunner status following Super Tuesday. The coronavirus lockdowns happened soon afterwards, which left Bernie Sanders unable to actively campaign to make up for the Super Tuesday shortfall. He suspended his campaign on April 8th, leaving Biden unopposed. Biden ended up receiving 19 million votes in the primary, a Democratic record. The 37 million voters cast in the primary overall is also a record.
What is telling here in the percentage of the vote that Joe Biden received after April 8th, when he was running unopposed as Donald Trump was. Overall, Trump received 94% of the primary vote while running unopposed. When Joe Biden ran unopposed, he received a comparatively paltry 76% of the primary vote.
The Fall Campaign
Whether it is wise or not during the pandemic, Donald Trump is actively campaigning across the country, making visits from Maine to California and focusing heavily on Florida, North Carolina, and the Upper Midwest since he recovered from the coronavirus. His campaign has spurned TV ads for the most part, instead spending its money on a vast door to door campaign that is more focused on voter engagement. Unlike 2016, the Trump campaign has a massive number of
By comparison, the Biden campaign has limited appearances and focused more on a digital approach. The campaign went until the end of August before announcing visits by the candidate in fall battleground states and it was not until October before the Biden campaign began to establish a door to door campaign. Usually when a campaign changes game plans halfway through a campaign, it is because they are seeing signs that they may be in trouble. It is not hard to see where the trouble lay either.
In terms of voter registrations, Republicans heavily outgained Democrats in new registrations in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida. This can be attributable to the "get out the vote" effort on part of the Trump campaign as I believe it is far more effective to engage a voter in person than through impersonal means such as ads or cold calls. Democrats must have sensed this too, since these registration numbers are not exactly a secret, and responded to make up the shortfall.
That still leaves the lack of engagement on the part of the candidate himself. As of this moment, Biden has one scheduled visit in Georgia during this last week of the campaign. Trump by comparison is visiting Nebraska (the swing 2nd district), Wisconsin, and Michigan in one day this week.
Another way Trump has been able to get his message out is through social media, where he commands 87 million followers on Twitter and 30 million on Facebook. Joe Biden, by comparison, has a mere 11 million followers on Twitter and 3 million on Facebook, which leads me to my next point.
Enthusiasm Gap
If you thought Trump's enthusiasm gap over Clinton was bad, the gap between Trump and Biden is miles worse. Going back to the aforementioned rallies, Trump cannot hold the epic sized rallies he had back in 2016 due to coronavirus restrictions, so what his rallies have been doing is having small (for him) rallies in the open air at areas such as airport hangars. Every single one of them he has held has been full regardless, even in states like New Hampshire, Nevada, and Maine, states he did not win last time.
Biden's in-person events, when he has them, are miniscule in comparison. Biden can never get more than a couple hundred people to come to one of his rallies, even in formerly safe Democratic states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. His surrogates are not doing any better, as shown by this Kamala Harris rally earlier today. Even Barack Obama, who was to Democrats during his Presidency what Trump is to Republicans now, could not draw more than 400 people to a rally in Philadelphia.
This is not a recent problem for Biden; he was drawing crowds in the hundreds during the primaries while opponents such as Sanders and Warren were drawing in tens of thousands. We have already seen the danger that lies for Biden with the lack of enthusiasm; the evidence lays with his nearly campaign killing finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire earlier this year.
Beyond that, there is a stunning groundswell of support for Donald Trump that is occurring organically. For the better part of this year, Trump supporters have been organizing parades by boat and by car without any help from the campaign itself to show support for the President, such as this massive display of support for Trump in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. They are not just happening in areas you would expect either; there have been multiple Trump rallies in Beverly Hills and even one in New York City this past weekend.
While there have been pro-Biden rallies of a similar nature, they have again been small in comparison and far less numerous than the Trump rallies. Just take these dueling rallies in Arizona for example, a state that many are projecting to lean towards Biden.
Due to a lack of excitement for Biden himself, it stands to reason that his support is more about opposing Trump than supporting Biden. As for how that kind of vote goes, just ask John Kerry in 2004 and Mitt Romney in 2012.
Minority Outreach
One of the reasons that Hillary Clinton lost was because her campaign took blue collar voters in the Upper Midwest for granted while Trump actively courted them. While Biden is "trying" to win those voters back (he will not), Trump set his sights on a different demographic that favors Democrats: Hispanics and Blacks.
As mentioned before, the Trump campaign has a very well organized ground campaign focused on voter outreach. It is not just focused on his base; it is reaching out to minority voters as well. Despite the racial unrest this year since the death of George Floyd, the Trump campaign is actively reaching out to the Black community. There are signs of support among Latinos for Trump as well.
What is interesting is that this slight uptick in minority support is actually reflected in the polls. Several polls show Black support for Trump in the teens to around 20%. It does not sound like much of anything, until you remember Trump received around 8% of the Black vote in 2016. If Trump's support among Blacks has actually doubled, it becomes very hard for Biden to win states like Michigan and Wisconsin.
As for Latinos, weak support for Biden (see enthusiasm gap) has him in trouble among that group. This will spell doom for Biden in states such as Texas, Arizona, and especially Florida where the large contingent of Cuban Americans living there have a deep mistrust of Biden.
The Polls
It is often what is unreported about polling that is often the most telling. After 2016, there was much talk about the "shy Trump voter" effect. This asks the question whether there are Trump supporters who are not counted in polling because they do not respond to polling inquiries. One pollster (who had Trump winning in 2016 and again this time) certainly thinks so and explains his reasoning here.
Another important key question from Gallup asks if voters think they are better off now than they were four years ago. In 2012, 45% said yes ahead of Obama's reelection. This year, 56% said yes. This would indicate that people seem to think Trump's policies are working out well for them even if they do not agree with his personality. Trump may have helped himself in that regard by acting more calmly and measured in last week's debate.
Perhaps the polls are right. Maybe Joe Biden is heading for a comfortable, 2012-esque Democrat win. But if you had no polls at all and could only look at the race as it is; you would think Trump is heading for a landslide. I'm going to hedge my bet and say Trump wins a close one similar to 2016, though a landslide certainly would not surprise me.
As a final note; early voting results are useless as they only tell how many people of which party has already voted, not how they actually voted. Democrats lead in early voting, but that was expected given that Democrats favored vote by mail and Republicans favored Election Day in-person voting. Democrats also led in early voting in 2016; look at how that turned out. That being said, it is telling that an estimated 25% of early voters did not vote in 2016. If that 25% share of first time voters is any way reflective of the lead in voter registration Republicans have in multiple battleground states, Election Night (my favorite night every two years) will be very short indeed.
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