President Trump’s shocking upset in the 2016 presidential election was a humbling one for most political prognosticators. But as the 2020 race gathers steam, the media run the risk of overcorrecting for their previous failures.
The central mistake that pundits made during the 2016 election was the default assumption that Trump’s candidacy was so obviously absurd that he couldn’t possibly win the nomination of a major party, let alone capture the presidency.
So, when polls showed him consistently ahead of his rivals throughout the Republican primaries, many pundits kept predicting that the bottom would fall out as voters paid more attention, the large field winnowed down, and Trump hit a wall of appealing to voters beyond his core constituency.
While many analysts downplayed polling evidence during the primaries, they turned around and treated polling as gospel during the general election. Polls showing Hillary Clinton ahead both nationally and in a critical mass of key battleground states were compelling evidence that Trump would lose.
Theories about a late surge, or of polls undercounting Trump supporters, were dismissed. After all, many people made the same arguments about Mitt Romney in 2012 that never panned out, and the phrase “skewed polls” became the subject of mockery on social media.
I plead guilty to underestimating Trump in both the primaries and the general election. My mistakes have certainly forced me to recalibrate how I will approach any analysis going forward, especially when it comes to being more qualified when offering predictions.
That said, I also worry about the danger of moving too far in the opposite direction and drawing overly broad conclusions from 2016, which was a unique election.
Trump was elected president in his first campaign, without any prior political or public office or military leadership experience. That had never happened in the history of the U.S. If a bombastic businessman and former reality TV show star with enough personal baggage to fill a fleet of semitrailers could capture the White House, some people have wondered, who can’t?
The Trump experience has created a reluctance to dismiss candidates who would typically be seen as long shots. With 20 Democrats running, that could translate into dramatically overrating the chances of many candidates.
For instance, Sen. Bernie Sanders, a socialist who would be turning 80 during the first year of a theoretical presidency, is treated as having a real shot at being the next president. Heck, I’ve even made the case myself. Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of the modest-sized South Bend, Ind., would have been written off in prior races, but now he’s seen as a genuine contender. CNN even hosted town halls for businessman Andrew Yang and self-help author Marianne Williamson, who, in case you don’t follow politics for a living, are both running for president.
Sure, one way of looking at the Trump experience is that anything could happen. But another possibility is that Trump was unique — whether it was due to the issues he focused on, his style, or his background as a widely known television celebrity with decades of experience with manipulating the mass media. Trump won, but many, many more outsider or long-shot candidates came up short in the decades before his victory. So maybe people are overextrapolating from a rare example.
Another conclusion one might draw from the 2016 election is that Trump is a nontraditional candidate, and so polling doesn’t accurately represent his underlying support. Normally, pundits would view as extremely vulnerable a president who has never polled above 45%, even with a strong economy. But in the case of Trump, there’s a fear of repeating the same mistakes and underestimating him once again.
That is likely wise, but it also may mean that his vulnerabilities are underappreciated. Though Trump won in 2016 despite poor polling, he also faced a historically unpopular opponent in Clinton. Should he face somebody next year who polls more like a normal candidate, the outcome could be much different.
It is no doubt smart of analysts to proceed with more caution when it comes to making predictions, given their failures last time around. But we should also recognize, in doing so, they may be distorting political coverage this time around.
