There are going to be lots of different ways to examine Donald Trump’s impending loss. But I want to point to a very basic one that’s so simple that it might escape notice: On election night, you should keep an eye on the raw vote totals.
The basic question about Trumpism going forward is whether it is (1) a new and rising tide creating an ideological revolution, or (2) the high-water mark of a dying worldview. I think the raw votes will be instructive on this point.
For a little perspective, here are the vote totals for the last five Republican presidential candidates:
2012: Mitt Romney, 60,933,504
2008: John McCain, 59,949,323
2004: George W. Bush, 62,040,610
2000: George W. Bush, 50,456,002
1996: Bob Dole, 39,197,469
If the election were held today and turnout was the same as 2012, and Trump pulled his Real Clear Politics poll average—which is 42 percent—then Trump would get 53 million votes. That would be the worst Republican total since 2000—by a lot. And understand that the 2000 election, in addition to having a smaller pool of potential voters, was the last election of the low-turnout era. To be anywhere near the 2000 Republican total is disastrous.
But here’s the thing: I suspect that 53 million votes is actually Trump’s ceiling. It seems more likely that turnout will dip this year because of the extraordinary unpopularity of the two candidates and that as the bad news cascades, Trump will not make it to 42 percent. So even though 53 million votes would be the worst Republican showing since 2000, understand that it’s probably in the neighborhood of Trump’s max-threshold.
What happens if turnout stays the same but the bottom falls out and Trump pulls, say, 38 percent? Then he gets 48 million votes, which is well below Bush’s 2000 number.
And what if turnout falls by 3.5 million votes (which was the drop off from 2008 to 2012)and Trump crashes? Then we’re looking at 46 million votes and from there you can see Bob Dole Land off in the distance.
The reason you should keep those vote totals in mind is because they will tell you something about the number of people who are interested in Trumpism going forward.
It’s still possible that Trump will only experience a normally large loss, in the 5- to 7-point range. But it is also possible that, as they did in 2014, 2012, and 2010, the polls are underestimating the size of the wave that and we will witness the kind of wipeout where the big question on election night is whether or not Clinton will carry Texas, too.
For that kind of loss, we only have one kind of recent historical precedent: the Goldwater and McGovern campaigns. The story that precedent tells us is that a new ideology challenged the old party orthodoxies and, while it was wiped out initially, it became dominant in the long run because of its vigor and appeal.
However different Goldwater and McGovern were ideologically, they were alike in that both of their campaigns were powered by young voters, the Baby Boomers who were just coming to political maturity.
It turns out that Trump campaign is powered by Baby Boomers, too. But since we’re half a century past Goldwater and McGovern, this means that Trumpism’s growth potential is–I will try to put this delicately–severely limited. Have a look at what the map would look like with only Millennials voting. This should give you a pretty good sense of what Trumpism’s future looks like.
If Trump pulls 50 million votes on November 8, the better analogy might come not from 1964 or 1972, but from 1937.
