Much has changed since late January 2016, when the presidential candidates of both parties were on the eve of the Iowa Caucuses. Nominees and running mates have been chosen. Conventions have come and gone. Scandals have dominated the headlines only to be forgotten a few days later when something new and even more outrageous takes their place.
But one fascinating poll number has stayed in place for quite some time: The percent of Americans who say they would be anxious about one or both candidates becoming president. And it’s this very metric – which candidate makes swing voters more nervous – that may be critical.
For months, voters have said that they strongly dislike both Trump and Clinton, but Trump tends to make a higher percentage of voters nervous. If Trump’s recent efforts to stay “on script,” paired with the Clinton team’s complete mishandling of the candidate’s bout of pneumonia, upend this long-standing dynamic, it could wind up being the Clinton camp’s worst nightmare.
Donald Trump has always been something of a risky proposition. (Democrats relished calling him “Dangerous Donald” for a brief time this spring.) He is a dramatic departure from what we think of as presidential. But for many of his supporters, this is a feature, not a bug.
It’s easy to liken him to an experimental drug that might cause major side effects, but could also miraculously cure what ails you; some people are tired enough of being sick that they take the risk, but are still anxious nonetheless. In January, 69 percent of voters said that the idea of a Trump presidency made them anxious. By the time June rolled around, that number had not changed. At almost seven out of ten saying they are anxious about a Trump presidency, there are certainly people in that group who are also planning to vote for Trump anyway.
Clinton, on the other hand, has not particularly represented big bold change or massive disruption. In an election year where voters are frustrated, being too “status quo” could be a liability, but being a candidate who makes fewer people anxious and nervous the upshot of that positioning. And indeed, in January, 51 percent of people thought a Clinton presidency made them anxious – not a great number, but not as bad a number as Trump’s. By June, her number was still holding at 50 percent.
One of Clinton’s strengths strategically is that while many swing voters dislike both candidates, they view Trump as having a potentially more dramatic downside, a sort of “do you go with the devil you know or the devil you don’t” problem. Of those voters who do NOT support Clinton, about a third are willing to concede that if she were president, we’d “get through OK,”; that number falls to only one in five voters who don’t support Trump.
It seems that in the last week or so, the Trump team has drilled into him the message that he ought to do everything he can to set at ease those minds that are on the fence, trying to decide if a Trump presidency would be a danger or if we’d “get through OK.” For a solid five or so days in a row, the focus of the campaign has been on Clinton, not Trump.
At the same time, the prospect of a candidate concealing important information from the public – always a cornerstone of Clintonian politics – can undermine the idea that a Clinton administration would be predictable. Setting aside the anxiety-inducing prospect of a president who actually does have a major health issue, the campaign’s bizarre response to the story (ditch the press, hide the candidate, wait a few hours while the news media speculates, finally reveal pneumonia) only exacerbated the feeling of worry.
At this point, it is unlikely that either candidate is going to be able to do much more serious damage to each other’s favorables. No doubt they’ll try, of course. But we’re already at rock bottom; there’s no where lower to go.
The key voters this year will be those who dislike both Clinton and Trump but nonetheless swing between them, and are forced to make a choice between what they view as two bad options. If those voters ultimately decide they want to avoid taking a dangerous risk, up until this moment in the campaign, it’s likely that dynamic would benefit Clinton. In a world where the headlines seem to constantly inspire fear and worry, it would be smart for the presidential campaigns to each position themselves as a potential source of stability.
It’s a sad day when “I’m the devil you know” may be the best presidential campaign strategy, but alas, welcome to 2016.
Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for The Washington Examiner and author of “The Selfie Vote.”
