President Trump is campaigning across the country in the final week of the race for the White House with all the trappings of incumbency and all the urgency of an underdog.
Democrats are confident that they have already banked enough of an early vote lead to withstand a late surge of in-person Trump voters on Election Day and that their nominee, Joe Biden, will finish the job Hillary Clinton couldn’t. The former vice president is ahead by 7.8 points in the RealClearPolitics national polling average and by 3.9 points in top battleground states.
But looking at the numbers in some of those individual states, Republicans see shades of Trump’s poll-defying, come-from-behind victory four years ago.
“The final week of 2020 is eerily similar to 2016. Roughly 2 points in six states is the difference between President Trump being reelected and a Biden Electoral College blowout,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “It is all about turnout now.”
Biden’s polling advantage has been steadier and more durable than Clinton’s, as the former secretary of state fell behind Trump a couple times during the campaign, while the 2020 race has looked the same since the end of the Democratic primaries. But Trump team polling guru Sam Mims pointed out in an Oct. 10 Twitter thread on the polling averages in several of the states that decided the last election that the numbers aren’t that different. In many cases, Clinton held a bigger lead and still lost them to Trump. The most dramatic example was Ohio, where Clinton led by 2.4 points, and Trump won by 8.3.
“The corporate media & social media harassed and ridiculed Trump supporters for four years,” tweeted Newsmax reporter Emerald Robinson. “They drove those voters to hide their opinions in public. That’s why all the public opinion polls are wrong.”
Trump’s frenetic pace is a whole different strategy than that of Biden, who has had a limited public schedule dominated by sparsely attended events. “While Biden largely sits on his keister in Delaware, Trump is wisely barnstorming the states and counties that will decide this election,” O’Connell said. “You couldn’t have a more stark contrast in how the two candidates are spending their time in the homestretch.”
That is the main thing hopeful Republicans and nervous Democrats are watching for: Will Biden’s lighter crowds, early lids (cessation of campaign activities for the day), and a less aggressive ground game end up being a miscalculation similar to the laments about Clinton’s failure to visit Wisconsin? Or does four years of Trump, and Biden’s massive cash advantage, close the gap this time around?
“It’s all about the battlegrounds,” said a Republican strategist in New York. “Fracking is a big issue. The Paris climate accord is a huge issue. The fact that they’ve politicized a nonpolitical contagion is disgusting.”
The pandemic also injects another layer of uncertainty into polling, though pollsters believe they have corrected their 2016 errors, and with the significant exceptions of the Florida and Ohio gubernatorial elections, were largely correct in predicting Democratic victories in the 2018 midterm elections. Republican pollster Frank Luntz has said, “My profession is done” if Trump wins again.
“The Democratic Party has moved so far to the left that it scares people,” said one longtime Virginia Republican strategist in predicting a Trump win nationally.
In addition to Trump, Vice President Mike Pence is going to be active on the campaign trail through Election Day, despite a COVID outbreak among his staff. Trump’s children, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, will also be making appearances. Trump is hitting the close states from 2016, including places he won, like Pennsylvania, and also states he lost, such as New Hampshire. Pence was in Minnesota, another state Clinton took, on Monday.
Trump has exuded confidence on the trail, often dancing to the Village People to the crowd’s delight. At one stop, supporters air drummed along to Phil Collins’s solo in his classic song “In the Air Tonight.”
But even some Republicans believe this will be too heavy a lift. “I just don’t see a path to Trump winning,” said a veteran GOP operative in Washington, D.C. “It may tighten a bit, but he started the last few weeks so far behind with suburban women and his hemorrhaging with seniors, I don’t see him overcoming that.”
“Biden could still lose this, especially if he continues with gaffes like the energy comment last week, but if he stays in the basement, he will probably still beat him,” the operative said.
Trump Tuesday is scheduled to hit Nebraska, where he leads statewide, but one electoral vote is in play, as well as Michigan and Wisconsin.
