Trump and Election 2020
By Nayyer Ali MD
There are only 15 weeks left till the 2020 election, and at this point the picture is looking grim for Trump’s chances of pulling out a win. He pulled out a most improbable victory in 2016, losing the popular vote by 2% and winning the Electoral College by tiny wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, by a cumulative 77,000 votes. In the last four years he has governed to please his conservative base, but he has made no effort to expand his appeal to Democrats or Independent voters.
This “base only” strategy is not going to power him to victory. Opinion polls show him down by 8-14 points in national polls, and by significant margins in swing states. At this point both Pennsylvania and Michigan look solidly Democratic, leaving Trump a very narrow path to win. He must hold onto Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa, all of which he won in 2016, and must also hold Arizona and Wisconsin. Even that alone would only get him a tie at 269 Electoral Votes, and if Biden wins the city Omaha, Nebraska, that would give Biden one extra Electoral Vote and hence the win (Nebraska and Maine are oddball states that divide their Electoral Votes by individual congressional districts, Trump could win the state of Nebraska while Biden wins one vote from Omaha). In fact, a recent poll of Omaha showed Biden leading Trump by several points, and historically Omaha also voted for Obama in 2008.
What is hurting Trump is the headwinds of demographic change that are fatally weakening the Republican Party. The GOP is seeing its political prospects around the country continue to slide away. Over the last twenty years the underlying political trends in the US have been moving in a liberal direction. From 2000-2006 the US government was firmly in Republican hands, with Bush in the White House, GOP control of both the House and Senate, and a conservative Supreme Court majority. But if we take the political map of the 2000 election as the baseline, it is obvious that the GOP has been steadily draining support. The reason is that the main groups that vote Republican, older White voters, Whites without a college degree, rural voters, and White evangelical Christians, are all shrinking as a share of the American population. The core groups of the Democratic Party, younger voters, minorities, women, college educated Whites, and urban voters, have been steadily expanding.
These trends have gradually moved one state after another into the reliably Blue Democratic column. The first state was New Mexico in 2000, followed by Colorado, Nevada, and Virginia in 2008. Obama also won Ohio, Iowa, and Florida twice, and North Carolina once in 2008, but they all remained swing states and not solidly Democratic. In 2016, three solid Democratic states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all voted narrowly for Trump, giving him the win because Hillary Clinton could not hold onto Ohio or Florida. This was driven by the high number of non-college educated Whites in those states that broke sharply for Trump.
But the underlying demographic trends have continued. In 2018, Arizona elected a Democrat to the Senate, and this was just an appetizer for the main course. This year it looks like Arizona is going to finally move into the Blue column as polls give Biden a solid lead. If Arizona becomes a solid Democratic state, as neighboring Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada have already done, this will make it almost impossible for the Republicans to be competitive for the White House.
But Arizona is not the only GOP trouble spot. Demographic changes have moved North Carolina into a lean Democratic column. Polls have consistently given Biden a small but durable lead. Florida is also leaning Biden in multiple polls by as much as 6 points. Given that Florida has been decided by 1-2 points for the last 20 years, such a lead is remarkable. Finally, two other southern states have been moving towards the Democrats, Georgia and Texas. In several polls Biden has even had small leads in both states. Without Texas, the GOP is finished in its current incarnation.
Trump has to quickly reorder the race. To win reelection, a President normally should have more voters approve than disapprove of him. But Trump has always been underwater on this metric since the start of his Presidency. He has never been popular, usually sitting at minus 10 in the polling averages. In the last two months with the country unhappy with his management of the pandemic, his net approval has slipped to minus 15. Unless he can turn this around sharply in the next 6-8 weeks, it is going to be very hard to see how he can possibly win the election. There is usually very little movement among voters in the last 45 days of the race, by then most have made up their mind and many have voted early by mail. For Trump, he does not have 15 weeks to catch Biden, he has at most 8 or 9.
