Have All The Voters Made Up Their Minds Already? How About In Florida And Wisconsin?

Tsunami by Nancy Ohanian

Right now Blue America is trying to figure out which voters to target in several congressional races around the country where we plan to advertise. Normally, we try to reach persuadable voters and leave turning out the base to others. This year I've never seen so few persuadable voters. Because of Trump, almost everyone seems to have made up their minds. I laughed when I heard that the presidential debate in Miami-- a town-hall-style event-- would only allow questions from undecided voters. Where will they find them? Recent Quinnipiac and Monmouth polls show just 3% of registered voters undecided. And even in Florida, only 5% of voters say they might change their minds.

Coming to the same conclusion we did, Neal Rothschild reported for Axios that Voters have made up their minds. And he also concluded that it's because of Trump. "Entrenched views," he wrote, "mean there's less reason for campaigns to try to change voters' minds than to convince those already with them to vote-- and help educate them about mail-in and early-vote procedures to make sure their votes count.

But does antipathy for (or love of) Trump mean that down-ballot races are already decided? I asked some of the Blue America-endorsed candidates in Florida what they're finding as they head into the final weeks of campaigning.

"Down ballot races," said Bob Lynch, a Miami-Dade candidate for the state legislature, "typically come down to name recognition. Especially in Florida where our ballots are enormously complicated between all of the local races at the city and county level coupled with purposely confusing ballot initiatives. Many voters I’ve spoken to are afraid of making the WRONG choice, so if they are not familiar with certain candidates or offices, they will leave them blank. I think the party takes it for granted that people are just going to Vote Blue No Matter Who. Sure there will be a large proportion of voters who do this, but that won’t be the case in my district which is split 38% GOP, 32% NPA, and 29% Dem. Split tickets are also not uncommon in Miami. This is precisely why it is is so important to not only run down ballot candidates to contest every race, but to SUPPORT those candidates so they can get their name recognition up and their message out. The name of the game in Florida for the past 25 years has been to take voters for granted. Either that they will vote for Dems or to ignore them entirely. My campaign seeks to make the case for the Biden/Harris campaign as well as why I will be a better choice for the 116th district."

Saturday morning, a NY Times report honed in on Wisconsin, where Trump has been in the dog house. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Trump down by 6.3 points and the most recent Emerson Poll shows Biden leading Tump 51-44% among Cheeseheads (with just 3% undecided).

The Trump campaign saw a way to victory-- the law and order card. "Worries about law and order, wrote Reid Epstein and Sabrina Tavernise, "have become so prevalent in the state that likely voters in the Times poll said the issue was just as important as solving the coronavirus pandemic, the public health disaster that has fueled economic distress, prompted schools to operate virtually and led to more than 1,200 deaths in the state, according to a Times database of coronavirus cases. Yet so far, Mr. Trump has failed in his attempt to capitalize politically on his inflammatory remarks about the unrest in Kenosha, Wis., where last month demonstrators burned a number of buildings following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Mr. Blake remains hospitalized after being shot seven times in the back during a confrontation captured on video and later broadcast online. Nearly one in five Wisconsinites who said that riots in American cities were a bigger problem than racism in the criminal justice system planned to vote for Mr. Biden-- even though it is Mr. Trump who is vowing a severe federal crackdown on violent outbursts."

For more than a decade, Wisconsin has been among the most polarized and evenly divided states in the country, and the fate of its political candidates has hung on turnout. When Democrats in its two major cities-- Madison and Milwaukee-- turned out in big numbers, party standard-bearers like Barack Obama and Gov. Tony Evers won statewide elections. But when Democratic turnout in Milwaukee or Madison has been soft, Republicans have prevailed: former Gov. Scott Walker carried the state in three elections between 2010 and 2014, and Mr. Trump won in 2016 by fewer than 23,000 votes out of nearly three million cast.

In Wisconsin’s cities, enthusiasm is high. The poll found 81 percent of voters in the cities said they were “almost certain” to vote, compared with 69 percent of suburban voters and 68 percent of rural voters. These city voters are also far more likely to favor Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump to maintain law and order. The intensity gap, if it is maintained through Election Day, is likely to benefit Mr. Biden.

In Trump-era elections that Democrats have won, there has been a surge of voter turnout in heavily Democratic Dane County, which includes Madison-- the state capital and home of the flagship University of Wisconsin campus. In April’s state Supreme Court election, nearly as many votes were cast in Dane County as in Milwaukee County, even though Dane County has less than 60 percent of Milwaukee County’s population.

...In Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington Counties, the state’s longtime conservative suburban heartland that adjoins Milwaukee to the west and north, Republican margins have slipped during the Trump era from where they were when George W. Bush and Mitt Romney were on presidential ballots. The Times poll found that in those three counties, Mr. Trump was leading Mr. Biden, 54 percent to 37 percent-- an erosion of support from 2012, when Mr. Romney won 67 percent of the three counties’ vote, and even from 2016, when Mr. Trump took 62 percent of the vote in the three counties.

...Demographically, Wisconsin is akin to Ohio and Missouri-- whiter, older and less educated than the national average, with a statewide electorate that has trended toward Republicans in the past decade even as major cities in those states have become more Democratic. Wisconsin retains a heavy concentration of Black voters, living mostly in Milwaukee and in the old Lake Michigan manufacturing hubs of Racine and Kenosha. Black respondents in the poll were nearly unanimous in their support of Mr. Biden.

Statewide, support for Black Lives Matter tracks with Mr. Biden’s voters-- 49 percent have a favorable view of the movement, while 43 percent have an unfavorable opinion. The movement’s support is strongest among city dwellers (66 percent), people of color (72 percent) and young voters (85 percent of those 18 to 29 years old)-- though more than half of independent voters and suburbanites also said they had a favorable view of Black Lives Matter.

Emily Voight is the progressive Democrat running for the Wisconsin Assembly seat occupied by Trumpist Ron Tusler. This morning, she told me that her district (AD-3) "is a gerrymandered heavily Republican district, GOP candidates typically getting around 60% of the vote. However, during the blue wave of 2018, the Democrat Scott Gavin managed to close the gap a little with 43% voter turn out. While we do not have actual polling data, from what I can gather from conversations with voters in the district, this is coming down to a system of values, either pro-Trump or pro-decency. While not many, it is notable that I have been contacted by Republicans saying they can't stomach Trump or the State Assembly incumbent Ron Tusler. These voters are very interested in my race, some have said it is due to my serving on the Calumet County Board, others have said they do not like how the Republicans in general have handled things since the COVID-19 pandemic, and others have referenced their respect for my father, former State Treasurer, Jack Voight. I am running a strong campaign, using social media to focus on the appalling statements made by my opponent, statements very similar to the ones Trump makes. I have also been calling out the inaction of all Republian legislators in our state, for their failure to even meet to discuss issues relating to COVID-19 or the recent events in Kenosha. Our grassroots campaign has made waves with the number of small contributions and having earned 108 more votes than the incumbent in our uncontested primary August election. This is definitely a district to watch, along with the whole state of Wisconsin!"

Jacob Malinowski is also running for the Wisconsin Assembly, but down in the red-leaning suburbs southwest of Milwaukee. "In my part of town," he told this morning, "enthusiasm for President Trump is beginning to wane. While many folks will still vote for him, there are far fewer yard signs than in 2016, and many moderates and independents might just not even show up. There are plenty of reasons for this, but one really takes the cake as I talk to folks around here: the Trump campaign isn't running on much at all. The message of 'Joe Biden's America will be chaos' is not working in my suburbs because voters aren't stupid, so beyond this law and order message, the Trump campaign doesn't have anything else. I hope this effect continues down-ballot, and I think Wisconsinites are just sick of the constant division and nothing getting done as a result."

Maybe this will changed some minds inside the Fox bubble. Fox viewers don't normally see anything like this... not ever: