Trump Isn’t Losing The Election, Yet
By: Edward Anderson
Tags: Politics, Opinion, Strategy, Careers, Election 2020

Trump Isn’t Losing The Election, Yet

It’s a strategy we’ve seen before and was effective.

Photo from Associated Press

Poll after poll after poll has shown Donald J. Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by a huge margin. One poll shows Trump lagging behind Biden by 16 points in Michigan, a crucial swing state in the 2020 election. The left screamed this from the rooftops for a moment.

Until they realized that this would make some Biden voters complacent. There is some debate as to whether this is a Trump strategy or not, but what most can agree on is that if voters think Biden has the election in the bag, they won’t vote.

For proof of this, scholars and political pundits don’t need to reach back very far into history. They just need to look at the 2016 election.

The Hillary Effect

Many people viewed the 2016 election, less as an actual election process, and more of a coronation of Hillary Clinton. Her credentials spoke to her experience and begged for her to become the first female president. When Trump won the Republican nomination, calling the general election a farce was being generous.

Under normal circumstances, Trump’s obvious and blatant racism would have curtailed most candidates. Mocking disabled reporters and boasting about being able to commit crimes would have been the final nail in the coffin. Mitt Romney was roasted for much less.

Every single poll showed Hillary winning the election. While she was considered the lesser of two evils, there was some excitement around her campaign and she seemed destined to move into the White House.

Yet it was Trump who inaugurated thanks to the electoral college. His victory in three states was so razor-thin that many thought there should have been a recount in those states. It didn’t happen.

Hillary won the popular vote by more than 3 million.

Biden’s Dilemma

How is it possible that Trump won the electoral college but lost the popular vote? In states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, he brought in less than 10,000 more votes. Some Monday morning quarterbacks have said Hillary’s big mistake was not visiting those states and assuming that they would go for her.

Why did she not go there? Because the polls showed her ahead in each of those states until it was too late. Some of her voters may not have felt an urgent need to cast their ballots because they assumed she would easily sail to victory. Something that Trump allegedly believed as well.

With the polls showing much the same thing in 2020, what is Biden to do? Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, economic collapse, and protests against systemic racism, his polling advantage has been on an upswing all year. But there is a danger in believing the polls and not campaigning, as some high ranking officials have suggested.

They want Trump to self-destruct. It is almost certain that he will.

What To Do?

But his from the hip commentary and racist language is what attracted some voters to him in the first place. Trump is no ordinary politician. Scandal after scandal has slid right off of him, including him blackmailing the president of Ukraine, which led to him being impeached by the House of Representatives.

The senate acquitting him has emboldened him as he wields the power afforded to him by the office as he bats away negative press. His former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, is set to publish a damning memoir and Trump is using the Department of Justice as an arm of his PR wing to silence a dissenting voice.

An action that he has tried to take with poll numbers that suggest he is losing to Biden. White House attorneys sent a letter to CNN asking them to retract their story and issue an apology to Trump. As their evidence, they shared a poll given by John McLaughlin that shows Trump ahead by unbelievable margins. The issue with this was that McLaughlin is notoriously wrong with his polls and worded his survey in a provocative way.

With all of this, Biden staying out of the campaign as much as possible does sound like a good way to ensure victory. However, he needs to excite his voters and get them to the polls in November. It would also be wise for the former vice president to really focus on exciting his supporters in swing states.

There should be a celebration that it seems like Trump might be evicted from the people’s house. But we should be cautious that the polls have been wrong before and could be stuck with him for another four years.