Trump Still Has A Narrow Pathway To Victory

Amy Walter did some significant research for the Cook Report that was published yesterday. It confirms what we already know: Trump's narrow pathway to victory hinges on 2 things, turning out his base of haters-- even the ones who don't normally vote-- in huge numbers, while disenfranchising and discouraging as many normal people from voting as possible.

Trump's polling is in the toilet-- nationally and in the swing states-- and Walter looked at the increasingly narrow pathway he still has. "Trump," she wrote, "is trailing, not because he's losing his 2016 base, but because he has never expanded beyond it." She compared new recent national poll from Pew(7/27-8/2) with the results of Pew's 2016 validated vote survey (basically, a post-election exit poll that uses official voting records). What she found is that "Trump is hitting his 2016 share of the vote among most demographic groups. But, he's not grown beyond those voters. Instead, it's Biden who has improved markedly on Clinton's 2016 performance."

[I]n almost every demographic category, Trump's share of the vote mirrors what he got in 2016. In other words, there's no evidence that he's slipped significantly with his base, or gained support from anyone who didn't support him in 2016.

For example, for all the talk of Trump's cratering in the suburbs, the recent Pew poll finds that the president isn't doing any worse today among white, college-educated voters than he did in 2016. In 2016, Trump took just 38 percent of the vote from this group. Today, he's still sitting at 38 percent. But, Biden has improved on Hillary Clinton's 55 percent showing by 6 points to 61 percent. Trump hasn't lost support from his core white, non-college base either. The July/August poll found him taking 64 percent with this group-- the same percentage he got in 2016. But, Biden has improved on Clinton's anemic 28 percent showing by 6 points. Most important, Trump has made no gains among independent voters, while Biden has improved on Clinton's showing by 14 points.

One bright spot for Trump is an increase in support from Latinos. He took 35 percent of the vote among Hispanics in July/August, a 7 point increase from his 2016 showing. His support among Evangelical Protestants has also improved-- from 77 percent in 2016, to 83 percent.

So, how can this work? If Trump isn't really losing support from his 2016 base, but Biden is gaining on Clinton's performance, where are those extra votes coming from?

Answer: a lot is coming from voters who supported third-party/other candidates in 2016. According to the Pew July survey, voters who didn't support either major party candidate last election are now breaking decidedly for Biden-- 55 percent to 39 percent. This group of non-Trump/non-Clinton voters doesn't get the attention of Obama-Trump voters or suburban moms, but they are a not-insignificant portion of the electorate.

In the 2016 election, the non-Clinton/Trump vote was 6 percent. The Pew validated voter survey put it at 7 percent-- so a touch higher than the popular vote...

Trump has failed to broaden his base. Instead, his ability to win this election will come down to whether he can deepen his base.

That means turning out a higher percentage of his base vote and hoping that Biden and Democrats fail to meet that same level of enthusiasm with their core constituencies.

Analysis from my colleague David Wasserman earlier this year revealed a huge number of non-voting, non-college whites in the Upper Midwest. "In 2016, non-college white voters made up 50 percent of the electorate in Michigan, 49 percent in Pennsylvania and 63 percent in Wisconsin. But among non-voters, whites without college degrees were 60 percent in Michigan, 64 percent in Pennsylvania and 64 percent in Wisconsin." In other words, there's a large pool of potential voters for Trump to mine in key swing states.

But, Trump's path to building on his 2016 showing isn't looking as clear and easy as some might expect. An analysis of the most recent Marquette University Law School survey by Craig Gilbert, the pre-eminent expert of voting trends in the state, and a reporter/columnist at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, finds signs of weakening for Trump in parts of the state he dominated in 2016.

Gilbert found that Biden's strength in the Milwaukee and Madison media markets is similar to Clinton's, but that the former Vice President "is battling Trump to a draw in the combined media markets of Green Bay, Wausau, La Crosse, Duluth and the Twin Cities-- media markets that encompass the kind of small-town, rural areas where Trump beat Clinton by 15 points in 2016.

This could be due to a number of factors, writes Gilbert, including Biden's "own political strengths," an "erosion of support for Trump," and/or the fact that these are parts of the electorate where Clinton underperformed in 2016 and Biden is simply hitting 'normal' Democratic performance.

Either way, it suggests that just trying to run up the score by bringing in low-propensity voters from these parts of the state, may not be enough for Trump to win here in 2020. Of course, we don't know how the events of the last 60+ days of this election may impact this turnout. Will images of burning cities-- especially ones in their own state-- be enough to motivate more non-Trump-like voters to the polls this November? Will Trump be able to do something the campaign has thus been unable to accomplish: drive up Biden's negatives to Hillary Clinton's level? What happens if the coronavirus comes back with a vengeance this fall?

Trump's path to Electoral College victory has always been a narrow one. But, the latest Pew poll suggests that turning out infrequent base voters  is going to be more important than ever.

There hasn't been lot of publicly-available House polling. Occasionally campaigns share it with me but so far this summer there have been a few polls, mostly looking good for Democrats and bad for Republicans-- and applicable to Trump's struggle. Last week, for example, the Bangor Daily News released a poll of Maine's second congressional district which Trump won in 2016-- 51.4% to 41.1% (giving him one of Maine's 4 electoral college votes). Two years late the district flipped from red to blue based on ranked choice voting, giving dishonest conservative Democrat who campaigned as a progressive, Jared Golden a 1 point win. On election night the Republican incumbent's raw vote was 134,184 (46.33%) and Golden's was 132,013 (45.58%). Sinceno one reached 50%, ranked choice voting kicked in and Golden emerged the winner with 142,440 votes (50.62%) to Poliquin's 138,931 (49.38%) The new poll shows Golden beating his GOP opponent by 9 points this cycle.

Earlier this month Monmouth polled Iowa, and showed that the Democrats will keep the 2 seats won by Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne in 2018-- Finkenauer by 10 points and Axne by 6 points. The Republicans look likely to hold onto their one seat and possibly win the open blue seat from which Dave Loebsack is retiring. The latest Monmouth poll also shows Trump ahead in Iowa by 2 points.