With five months until the election, things couldn’t look any worse for the president of the United States. His approval rating is down to 40%. People are getting tired of his antics and the insults he hurls at his opponents. The media is increasingly confident that, come November, the voters will elect a new chief executive.
This might sound like June 2020, but I’m actually referring to June 1948 — when President Harry Truman, a Democrat, was running to keep his job against Republican Thomas Dewey.
The similarities between the 1948 and 2020 elections are striking. Like President Trump, Truman often ruffled feathers with his salty language. At one point, Truman even described Dewey as a fascist, a term not taken lightly just three years after World War II.
Just as with Trump, the media described Truman as desperate and unhinged. They mocked him for the more than 8,000 empty chairs at a speech he gave in Nebraska — presaging the coverage of Trump’s recent speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Almost everyone thought Truman would lose, including the president’s mother-in-law. A Newsweek poll reported 50 out of 50 politicos predicting a Dewey victory.
But on Nov. 3, 1948, the world woke up to the stunning news that Truman had won. The experts were left struggling to make sense of how they got it so wrong.
Today, we’re seeing poll after poll showing Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden. In the echo chamber of cable news and social media, there’s a growing consensus that Trump is headed for humiliating defeat.
Are the pundits right, or are we moving toward another stunning win by a beleaguered incumbent? Could history be repeating itself?
The 1948 election warns us that an upset is very possible. There are two dynamics at work in 2020 that were decisive that fateful year.
The first is political staying power. Prior to 1948, the Democrats had won four straight presidential elections. Many observers assumed that they were due for a loss, especially with the GOP’s large gains in the 1946 midterm elections. The media, however, underestimated the strength of the Democrats’ New Deal coalition. While commentators were thinking in terms of political cycles and party turnover, they failed to consider the New Deal’s long-term appeal for its constituents.
Today’s pundits might be making the same mistake with Trump’s 2016 coalition. Throughout the Mueller investigation, the impeachment process, the pandemic, and record unemployment, Trump’s approval rating in the RealClearPolitics average has remained surprisingly consistent (around the mid-to-low 40s), showing that at least 4 out of 10 people support the president regardless of whatever the opposition throws up. That may not be sufficient to guarantee victory, but it’s a precious asset in a general election — especially with Democratic enthusiasm for Biden comparatively low.
The second factor is that people often vote for incumbent presidents based on certain intangibles (leadership skills or likability) despite the candidate’s perceived flaws or policy disagreements. The Washington Post alluded to this phenomenon after Truman’s victory: “The American people admire a man with courage even though they don’t always agree with him.” The voters might even give the opposing party control of Congress during the midterm elections to check that president, but they will still reelect a flawed incumbent because of their supposed charisma (see Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) or boldness (see Truman).
Like Trump, Truman was seen as a fighter who was not afraid to go against the political establishment. And like Biden, Dewey was an uninspiring candidate who, because of overconfidence, played it safe and limited his public appearances.
It is possible that in a dangerous and unpredictable world, voters will prefer a feisty and aggressive Trump over a lackluster Biden.
Despite all of this, Biden could still win in November. But if history can teach us anything, it is that the experts can get it wrong. We don’t even have to go back to 1948. Exactly four years ago (in June 2016), Hillary Clinton led Trump in the polls by 5 percentage points. The night before the election, the intelligentsia was still confidently predicting a Clinton win. The next day, Trump stunned the world.
Richard Lim is the co-founder and host of the This American President podcast.
