President Trump’s campaign message on law-and-order does not appear to be pushing him ahead of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden despite a wide assumption among analysts in Washington that he would have an electoral edge due to the issue.
Fox News polls of battleground states conducted between Saturday and Tuesday found that more voters in Wisconsin and Arizona thought Biden would be a better leader on policing and criminal justice than Trump, leading 47%-42% and 47%-42%, respectively. Trump did have a slight edge on the issue in North Carolina, 47% to 46%.
After riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a flurry of analysis from Democrats warned that Trump could get a boost from his law-and-order message if Biden did not place a bigger focus on the destruction. His previous condemnations of violence were not enough when the Trump campaign continued to hammer the argument that the rioters are “Biden supporters” and that the violence in Democratic-controlled cities would spread to other areas if the Democratic presidential nominee is elected, they worried.
One data point they cited that suggested anti-riot rhetoric could be effective: Marquette Law School polls of Wisconsin voters showed that support for the Black Lives Matter protests were high in June, with 61% in support and 36% who disapproved. By early August, that fell to 48% approve and 48% who disapproved.
Internal polling from America First Policies, a nonprofit 501(c)4 organization that supports Trump’s reelection effort, had another data point that may have given the Trump campaign hope that he could make inroads hammering his law-and-order message and blaming Democrats for the unrest. The poll found that among suburban voters (a group that will be critical to deciding the outcome of the election), 45% blamed Democratic-run cities for civil unrest, compared to 41% who blamed Republicans for the lack of social services funding. The poll was conducted the week of the Democratic convention, Aug. 17-20, and before the riots in Kenosha.
However, just 3% of likely voters said that “Upholding Law and Order” was the most important issue to them.
The protests, and the consequences from them, could very well affect the election results. A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this August found that violent crime was the fifth most important issue to voters in 2020, with 59% saying that it is “very important,” just behind the coronavirus outbreak at 62%.
But there is little evidence that Trump’s connecting the issue to Biden is pushing swing voters in Trump’s favor, and now that Biden has focused move heavily on the destruction and rebuked Trump’s arguments, the president’s campaign has more trouble making the argument that Biden is ignoring the issue.
One area where Trump does have an edge over Biden? Trust in handling the economy. The Fox polls found that in North Carolina, 51% of likely voters trusted Trump on the economy to Biden’s 43%, 45% to 44% in Arizona, and tied 45%-45% in Wisconsin.
