This isn't 2016, folks! Why there won't be a surprise this year
Fifteen days before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton was far enough ahead that pretty much everybody did think that the result was a foregone conclusion. Except it wasn't.
A great deal of ink has been spilled over the way Democrats and opponents of President Trump generally are suffering from a kind of PTSD from the totally unexpected victory of Donald Trump last time out. None of them seem to be taking comfort from Biden's large, stable, and apparently growing lead. In one sense, that's good; complacency only helps the President. And as FiveThirtyEight.com's Nate Silver- virtually the only source that warned about the instability of Hillary's lead last time- points out, the GOP's "Electoral College advantage" is still in play. If Joe Biden wins the popular vote by two percent, the probability is slightly in favor of the President nevertheless winning another victory in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote simply because the allocation of electoral votes slightly favors the "red" states. At a popular vote victory by two and three percent, Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com gives him only a 44.9% of winning the electoral vote. But if his victory is between three and four percent of the popular vote, his odds of winning a majority in the Electoral College increase to 66.9%!
His odds go up exponentially from there. If Biden's margin is between four and five percent his odds of being elected increase to 88.4%. Between four and five percent, they rise to 98%.
FiveThirtyEight gives President Trump a ten percent chance of winning a majority of the popular vote. It estimates the chances of Biden winning the popular vote by less than three percent at 12%.
It estimates the chances of Biden winning the popular vote by between three and eight percent at 21%. But it considers the most likely case a Biden popular vote victory of between eight or more points. In that case, it estimates Biden's chances of winning the Electoral College at 100%.
As of today, the Real Clear Politics average of the polls puts Biden ahead by nearly nine percent.
Could the race tighten? Sure. In fact, there's a good chance of some tightening. More on that at a moment. But is it really true that the polls blew it big time in 2016?
No! Sometimes what "everybody knows" doesn't happen to be true. This is such a case. In fact, Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote by a smaller margin than the polls predicted. But she did, in fact, win the popular vote, and the polls overestimated the margin by which she would do so by only one percent! Here is FiveThirtyEight's final word on what would probably happen in 2016. Its theme was that Hillary's lead in the final polls was within the normal margin of error!
Where the polls did mess up was not in the national race but in the individual states. Many people don't understand what a remarkably unlikely accident Mr. Trump's Electoral College victory really was. Trump won because 79,646 people in three specific states voted for him.
He carried Michigan by 10,704 votes, Pennsylvania by 46,765, and Wisconsin by 22.177 for a total of 46 electoral votes. He won each by less than one percent of the vote. If Hillary had done one percent better in each of them, she would have had an Electoral College victory by a margin of 278 to 260.
The latest polls in each of the three put Biden up by two points in Wisconsin (within the normal margin of error), but by nine in Michigan and four in Pennsylvania. The President certainly could still carry Wisconsin and perhaps Pennsylvania, but Michigan is almost certainly out of reach.
Could the race tighten in the final two weeks? Certainly. But it's unlikely to be by enough. According to Gallup's final 2016 poll, 52% of voters had an unfavorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, the second-worst showing for a presidential nominee in history (Trump's 61% was the worst). According to the RCP average, 46.1% see Joe Biden unfavorably, compared to 54.5% who see Mr. Trump that way. Biden is 1.6% "underwater;" Mr. Trump is in the popularity hole by 11.3%. As much as the President might wish that he was running against Hillary again, he seems unlikely to have more people vote against his opponent this time, as happened in 2016 than vote against him. He, and not his opponent, is the issue this time out. This shouldn't be surprising; last time his opponent was a familiar- and widely despised- quantity, and he was a newcomer people were willing to take a chance on. This time, he's the incumbent, and even more despised than Hillary was last time.
The polls have generally gone to great lengths to "weight" white males with less than a college education and other groups favorable to Trump more carefully this time. Are there vast numbers of "shy" Trump voters who lie to the pollsters and won't tell people that they support him? It seems unlikely. Why would they lie? Malice? Because they dislike pollsters? Perhaps, but it seems a rather shaky basis for seriously questioning the consistent results of so many polls, especially since unlike 2016 this year they've been remarkably consistent all year.
This article gives several crucial reasons why this election is different from the last one. It points out that the last poll actually puts Biden into positive territory in terms of favorability by one point, compared to an eleven point deficit for the President. In both elections, voters were dissatisfied by comparable margins with the direction of the country- a statistic that works against the incumbent. Four years ago, Mr. Trump was the "change agent;" this year, it's Biden. And while Biden's lead is only one point larger than Clinton's among registered voters, there is a crucial difference: Biden is polling over fifty percent. The undecided voters broke decisively for Mr. Trump last time. There aren't many undecided voters this time, and the indications we have at this point is that they are trending toward Biden. As a rule of thumb, late-deciding voters generally break heavily against the incumbent. But the crucial point lies in the fact that while Hillary was only garnering 47% of the vote, Biden's total is over half. All Biden has to do to win is not lose his current supporters. Even if every single undecided voter ended up voting for Mr. Trump, it wouldn't be enough to win the popular vote. To hold Biden's margin beyond the 4% mark at which a Biden victory in the Electoral College is almost guaranteed, Trump would have to capture most of the late-deciders again, something which seems highly unlikely for an unpopular incumbent.
Could President Trump be re-elected? Of course. There could be some major event that will shake things up even more than the President's unhinged performance in the first debate, his getting COVID due largely to his flamboyant refusal to take steps to protect himself or anyone else, and his inability to find purchase for any of his attacks on Biden has already shaped the race. Of course, it certainly won't be the contents of Hunter Biden's hard drive; despite the efforts of the President's supporters to create the opposite impression (including wild and highly stories about what's on it), there doesn't seem to be anything even slightly damaging to Joe Biden on it. And should something be "discovered," it's doubtful that most voters would assume that it's legit and not something fraudulently invented by the President's campaign.
But as we've seen, the widespread skepticism about the polls simply has no basis in actual fact. The failings of which they were actually guilty have been recognized and adjustments made to prevent their recurrence. And there is one further crucial reason why the result in 2020 is likely to be different from the one in 2016.
Last time out those who couldn't bring themselves to vote either for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump had several alternatives. Libertarian Gary Johnson received 4,443,505 votes nationally. Green Party candidate Jill Stein received 1,457,216. The man I voted for, independent conservative Evan McMullin, received 722,622. Constitution Party candidate Darrell Castle got 199,280, and Bernie Sanders got 105,549.
The Libertarian, Green, and Constitution Parties are running their own candidates again this year, although given the publicity the fact that if the votes cast for the Green candidate, Dr. Stein, had gone to Clinton instead she would almost certainly have defeated Trump that it's doubtful that the Greens will do nearly as well this time out. Some will doubtless write in Bernie Sanders again. But given the polarizing nature of the race, my guess is that the totals for all of the third party candidates will go down drastically.
McMullin got 8,177 votes in Michigan, Trump carried it last time by 10,704. McMullin wasn't on the ballot in Pennsylvania, where the RCP average already gives Biden a 3.8% lead. McMullin got 11,855 votes in Wisconsin, which Trump carried by 22.177 in 2016.
Again, due to the polarized nature of this election (as well as some less-formidable candidates), I don't expect the Libertarian, Green, or Constitution Party candidates to do nearly as well as they did last time. But while I don't necessarily expect every single voter who voted for McMullin in 2016 to vote for Biden this time out, McMullin voters- largely disaffected Republicans- seem overwhelmingly to be supporting Biden in 2020. I am one of them.
Even were Biden not already nine points ahead in Michigan, McMullin's 2016 total would very nearly be enough to erase Trump's margin in itself. The McMullin vote in Wisconsin is slightly more than half of the margin by which Trump carried the state last time out. I expect a significant percentage of 2016 Green voters to vote for Biden next month if only to avoid repeating the impact Jill Stein had on the 2016 race.
In short, this time the anti-Trump vote won't be nearly as badly split as it was last time. Joe Biden is simply not as divisive a candidate as Hillary Clinton was, and he's one disaffected Republicans and independents seem to be finding far easier to swallow.
So yes, there are similarities between the 2016 and 2020 races. But beneath the surface, the dynamics are much different. It's Trump, not his opponent, who is the more disliked. Voters once again are dissatisfied, but this time it's Mr. Trump's opponent, and not the President himself, who is the candidate of change. The opposition to President Trump seems largely consolidated around a single opponent, The flaws in polling which in fact resulted in a much less serious distortion in 2016 than is generally believed have largely been corrected, and the demographic groups not adequately considered in 2016 are now very much in the pollsters' field of view. There are fewer marginal and extreme new voters to be attracted to Mr. Trump's eccentric statements, positions, and personality. Unlike 2016, polling in 2020 has shown a remarkably stable race with unusually consistent results. And while Joe Biden's lead in the crucial battleground states is smaller than elsewhere, there are enough of them that the President seems unlikely to pull off upsets in enough of them to win the Electoral College.
The stability of Joe Biden's lead and the dynamics of the race make surprises on Election Night much less likely than last time. The Trump campaign seems to be spinning its wheels, while everything seems to be going Joe Biden's way. Above all, President Trump seems unable or unwilling to rein in his self-destructive streak or recognize the disconnect between his version of events and reality or to hit upon a strategy or even a theme likely to change the direction things are going. And he's running out of time.
So yes. History could repeat itself. Donald Trump could pull out another Electoral College victory despite what seems almost certain to be a defeat in the popular vote. But at this point, the margin of Joe Biden's popular vote victory seems likely to be large enough that it just doesn't seem probable.
True, the same was said about Hillary Clinton's lead four years ago at this point. But this time, with everything breaking against the President, his ongoing, self-destructive behavior, the voters weary of his behavior and his bumbling, and his options for changing things dwindling by the day, all the President's supporters have left are delusions about "shy" Trump voters and flaws in the polls which have largely been corrected and in fact never were as serious as most people believe.
Yes, President Trump could still win this election. But it's hardly the way to bet, and the odds against it get longer and longer every day.
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