The most recent A rated pollsters all have Trump’s disapproval between 55 and 57 percent. 538 pegs it at 55.8 right now. There isn’t a significant difference in Trump’s disapproval from Adults and Registered Voters. Joe Biden has an 8 point lead. Since June 6th, Joe Biden has had an average of a 7 point lead or better and has been at 49.8 or better. That’s seven weeks and 1 day. Right now, Biden is at 49.9 percent. We can compare this with President Obama’s polls against Mitt Romney in 2012 and President George W Bush’s polls against John Kerry. Both narrowly won re-election. President Obama was fighting against an economy that was bad when he inherited it and was only gradually improving. At no time did Romney hold a stable lead of 7 points over a seven week time period. Romney only led in a poll every once in a while until October. From October on, the polls looked like a toss-up, perhaps mildly favoring President Obama. While Kerry led in most polls in July and August, the leads were, on average, only one or two points. Kerry’s high water mark only gave him an average lead of about 2.5 points over a period that lasted about a week from July 29 to August 5th. After that, the polls were even or favored Bush through the election. President Bush won the popular vote by 2.5 points and barely won the electoral college by picking up Ohio by 100,000 votes. These were relatively competitive and narrow wins by the incumbent president. President Bush was not facing a terrible economy yet ; the Great Recession was yet to come.
Again, compare Trump’s situation to President Bush’s situation and President Obama’s situation. They both narrowly won re-election, especially President Bush. President Bush’s situation is probably the dividing line between winning and losing for an incumbent. An incumbent in a worse situation than President Bush is unlikely to win. Trump is in a far, far worse position than President George W Bush ever was.
Biden has a lead of 8 points on average in Florida. Biden is leading in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan all by about 7 points. Biden has a narrow average lead of about two points in North Carolina. Biden is leading on average by about 4 points in Arizona. Iowa, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas are all toss-ups. Biden is in a commanding position in the electoral college. Trump needs to win every one of those toss-ups except he could lose both Wisconsin and Michigan if he wins Pennsylvania or he could lose Pennsylvania if he wins both Wisconsin and Michigan. So, either he needs to win all of them but one state (Pennsylvania) or all of them but two states (Michigan and Wisconsin). He does not have a clear lead in any of these states and is well behind in several of them as noted above.
Trump’s strong disapproval rating has bounced around 50 percent. Trump’s polling average is below is 42%. In these partisan, tribal times, it is scarcely conceivable for an incumbent to be in worse position. With an average of 56% disapproval, Trump is in peril.
Trump is also losing the double-haters this time around, unlike last time.
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As Philip Bump has written, exit polls show they favored Trump by 21 points in Michigan, 25 points in Pennsylvania and 37 points in Wisconsin, easily accounting for his tiny margins in the three most important states.
That’s now reversed. An April Quinnipiac University poll showed voters who dislike both Trump and Biden favored Biden by 32 points. An NBC-WSJ poll the same month showed the margin at 50 points — 60 percent to 10 percent.
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.Our situation in winning the Senate is so grim that 538 felt compelled to put “Can the Democrats get to 60 seats in the US Senate ?” in the Confidence Interval. That tells us that we are very likely to win back control of the US Senate. I would say that we are strong favorites in CO (Hickenlooper over Gardner), AZ (Kelly over McSally), ME (Gideon over Collins), NC (Cunningham over Tillis) and likely to win in MT (Bullock over Daines). If Kobach is the nominee in Kansas, then Dr. Bollier is at least even money to win there. We are at least in a toss up situation in Iowa (Greenfield over Ernst). We have outside shots at the two seats in Georgia (Warnock and Ossoff) , the seat in Texas (Hegar over Cornyn), Kentucky (McGrath over McConnell) and in Alaska and Harrison could pull off an upset against Graham in South Carolina. Then, we want Jones to beat Tuberbille, the Auburn coach, in Alabama. That’s our path to 60. It is not at all likely, but it could happen. We need to net at least three seats with a Biden win. Unfortunately, I don’t see a Jones victory as likely, so that means we need to win at least four seats. We should certainly do that well or better. I would expect us to win at least five of the above elections and lose the Alabama rental. We are likely to hold both houses of Congress after the elections.
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.Huffpost referred to the political headwinds Trump is facing in this article.
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.A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also finds Trump’s approval for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic falling to a new low, with just 32% of Americans supportive of his approach. Even Trump’s standing on the economy, long the high water mark for the president, has fallen over the past few months after seeming ascendant earlier this year.The AP-NORC poll makes clear the challenge ahead for Trump on that front: 8 in 10 Americans say the country is heading in the wrong direction. That’s more than at any point since Trump took office. The poll also finds just 38% of Americans say the national economy is good, down from 67% in January, before the pandemic upended most aspects of everyday life.Overall, 38% of Americans approve of the president’s job performance — well within the narrow range that Trump’s approval ratings have stayed throughout this presidency, but down slightly from earlier this year before the pandemic.
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The bottom line is that Trump is in far worse position than any incumbent in recent times who has won re-election. The death toll will only continue to mount. The economy isn’t coming back any time soon prior to the election. To solve the economic crisis, one must first solve the public health crisis.
Monday, Jul 27, 2020 · 1:55:20 AM +00:00 · Dem
Trump only won 46% of the popular vote in 2016. I don’t think he gets there this time. Even if he did and Biden didn’t get any of the undecideds (50% + 42% = 92% giving us 8% undecided) and Biden simply retains his current percentage, then he wins by 4% and wins the electoral college with a four percent win. And that seems to be the worst case scenario. Typically, an incumbent is going to lose the majority of the undecided vote since undecideds already know the incumbent and yet have chosen not to back that incumbent. Thus, it would be more likely to expect that Biden gains the undecided vote 2 to 1. This can only mean that Trump must win not merely undecideds, but voters who have already chosen Biden. I find that hard to imagine. And Biden very well might add support when he announces his running mate selection in the next two weeks.
Monday, Jul 27, 2020 · 6:11:08 AM +00:00
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Dem
Normally, the election would not reach its center of gravity until after both conventions. It appears likely to me that the conventions are not going to significantly change the polls this time around because of the novel coronavirus’ impact on the convention. It is also hindering Trump from conducting political rallies. These are two of the primary ways that Trump had to reset the status of the election and they are gone. I have a hard time seeing anything reset the election in Trump’s favor.
Monday, Jul 27, 2020 · 6:49:19 AM +00:00
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Dem
I can’t see how the death toll from the novel coronavirus won’t continue to mount. The economy can’t recover while the novel coronavirus is rampant . We have already lost officially almost 150,000 and that doesn’t include the under count. Deaths due to specific conditions and diseases are remarkably consistent year over year. When we see a huge spike or increase in the number of deaths due to a certain condition that shares comorbidities with the novel coronavirus compared to previous years, then we can be reasonably confident that it the increase in deaths is actually due to COVID19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The fact is that Trump was warned in 2019 by American researchers within the World Health Organization about the dangers of the novel coronavirus. He was warned again by American intelligence agencies about the danger it presented. His own hand picked cabinet secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Azar, warned him about the dangers of the novel coronavirus. He called Secretary Azar “an alarmist”. He continued to minimize the dangers of the novel coronavirus even though he had access to the best scientists in the world, some scientists that others did not have access to. He had access to the National Institute of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, FEMA, HHS, the nation’s intelligence services and scientists in other organizations. Yet, he continually minimized the dangers of the novel coronavirus. He refused to model putting into practice the recommendations of the CDC like wearing a mask or social distancing. He reasoned that he and those around him were tested, but the test they are using has a 30% false negative rate. He refused to ramp up testing because he believed that testing increased the number of cases. However, a test doesn’t make somebody pregnant or not pregnant ; it simply reveals their status. He thought that increased numbers of cases would make him look bad, so he refused to ramp up testing. However, increasing testing would have given us an ability to know where the virus has been, where it currently is and where it is going. It would have enabled him to respond more effectively to it. The failure to ramp up testing meant we were flying blind.
He refused to call for and never did call for a national shut down and he never issued national restrictions because he felt that this would hurt the economy and a good economy, he believed, was crucial to his re-election. That good economy was more important to him than the lives of Americans. Yet, the economic crisis can’t and won’t be solved until the public health crisis is successfully contained and solved. He is the only elected official who had access to so many organizations that had epidemiologists as the head of the executive branch. He is the only person people voted for or against all across the country. The pandemic affected the entire country. Therefore, as the president of the entire country, he was responsible for responding to the pandemic. Senators and governors represent and govern their individual states and representatives only represent their individual congressional district. This is not true of the president. The country can deficit spend. States cannot deficit spend. Thus, the president needed to lead and issue restrictions and call for the stay at home order. Restrictions could not be issued in a piecemeal way by individual governors because if they are, then the virus will simply move from a more restrictive state to a less restrictive state. Had he called for a stay at home order in February and called for implementation of the recommendations of the CDC and modeled wearing a mask and social distancing, we would have far fewer deaths.
During that time of being shut down (while we are in a stay at home scenario), he should have used the time to his advantage to gain control of the novel coronavirus by taking the following actions: 1. Ordering PPE for all people on the front lines 2. Promoting staying at home and social distancing and wearing a mask 3. Building a strong contact tracing team 4. Ordering ventilators 5. Ordering chemical reagents and other products necessary for ramping up testing using the DPA 6. Ramping up testing 7. Creating an organization or group with epidemiologists and business leaders that developed plans for safely and succesfully re-opening businesses while implementing the recommendations of the CDC like social distancing and wearing gloves 8. Making sure that we had enough hospital beds
Had he led on the novel coronavirus, we would not be in the sorry estate that we are. We have almost a fourth of the world’s deaths and a fourth of the world’s cases while only having four percent of the world’s population. This did not have to happen. Many republicans only would listen to Trump and Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and by minimizing the dangers of the novel coronavirus and promoting the idea that this was a hoax, he led these people to not take the novel coronavirus seriously and they spread it and people died as a result of this madness. Here is a person whose idea of a medical response to catching the novel coronavirus is to mainline Clorox into one’s veins and if that fails, then stick a UV light up one’s ass. Why these people would choose to listen to somebody seriously promoting “these solutions” instead of actual epidemiologists is beyond me.
In summary, the reason why the novel coronavirus is out of control in this country and we have so many people sick and dead and 42 million Americans lost their jobs is because this president badly managed the response to the pandemic. People largely know this because they saw him minimize it and there is indisputable video evidence of him doing so over and over and over again. Again as a result of his mismanagement of the pandemic response, we have lost 150,000 Americans and 42 million Americans have lost their jobs so far. The death toll will clearly increase. There is no scenario in which the novel coronavirus does not continue to add to the death total.
I can’t come up with any president who has screwed up the response to a crisis this badly this close to the election with the data that we have and come back and won. I don’t believe that Trump will be the first.