President Trump may have a chronic net disapproval rating nationally. The impeachment process is warming up. Critics have called him out for his ‘erratic’ behaviour. He may be doing things to turn off independents.
BUT, a recent wave of New York Times-Siena polls has shown that Trump is holding up rather well where it matters. I have written previously that it is states, not national numbers, that matter, and such polls remind us of the predicament Democrats find themselves in.
Let’s focus on the sets of states that analysts have identified are key to any Democratic victory: the triumvirate of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – all of which were “blue wall” states that Trump won in 2016, and Arizona. Let’s put aside the latter for a moment. Trump won with 306 electoral votes. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have 16, 10, and 20 electoral votes respectively. The eventual Democratic nominee needs 38 electoral votes to deny Trump a second term and winning just two of those three states will not be enough to do it. Analysts like Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman argue that the band of battleground states up for grabs is much narrower in 2020, especially as Ohio, Iowa, and possibly Florida, are all drifting the Republicans’ way.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsNational polls will help tell us who has momentum next fall, but they're less useful than ever in telling us who will *win,* considering 2020's Electoral College battleground is likely to be quite narrow.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 4, 2019
If that holds, it means only one thing: it is Democrats who require an inside straight in 2020. And here is where the problem turns up. The polls show an extremely tight race in the triumvirate and if these numbers hold up, Sen Elizabeth Warren is in trouble if she becomes the nominee. She loses to Trump everywhere. Sanders could also face headwinds. And Biden? He’s holding up but by very narrow margins. To make matters worse, Biden has an even bigger problem. Young, non-white voters (those who I tag as “The Squad” voter, “The Squad” referring to Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Thalib, and Ilhan Omar) are not as enthusiastic about him if he becomes the nominee. Enthusiasm is everything, especially as Trump voters will walk over fire to vote for Trump. A failure to turnout of the Squad voter is what cost Hillary Clinton the triumvirate and therefore, the Presidency.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWill be interesting to see if this math starts to more deeply affect risk tolerance of Dem primary voters, many of whom are NYT subscribers (esp. liberal/white/high-college, aka Warren's base). Arguably it's already begun. pic.twitter.com/ZJpN7QNqV8
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 4, 2019
There are no easy routes to winning 2020. The fact that Warren is polling poorly means her Medicare-for-all plan is received poorly among moderate voters in the triumvirate. But even as Warren tries to do that, she risks alienating the Squad voters. These notions of socialism do not play well in Florida where Cubans and Venezuelans have fresh memories of its downsides.
And consider this, there is a potential upside of non-college whites that can turnout in 2020. And Wisconsin is a whiter state compared to Michigan and Pennsylvania. And Brad Parscale’s running of the Trump campaign is clockwork, especially in its social media operation. It’s another reminder of what Democrats are up against.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAnother reason Dems shouldn't extrapolate 2018 into 2020: by my math, there were roughly *52 million* eligible non-college whites who didn't vote in 2018 vs. only 13.7 million eligible college whites who didn't vote.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 4, 2019
There's plenty of upside for Trump, esp. in Upper Midwest.
So the bottomline of this is that national polls are absolutely meaningless. I have said this before and will say this again: Trump’s team, with their tweets and public antics, know exactly what they’re doing. They might never win a net approval rating nationally ever again. But they don’t need to. The fact that non-college whites are well-distributed in places that matter is all the Trump campaign needs to appeal to do what they’re doing. And it works excellently.
My Politics and More 