Reporters and columnists around the country are eagerly anticipating the fall of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, even as he continues to lead the polls and shows no signs of waning yet.
Michael Barbaro, a political writer for The New York Times, wrote Wednesday that Trump “seems to be wearing out” among voters and the conservative media. But as evidence, he cited what he said was a “rare” comment from conservative commentator Glenn Beck trashing Donald Trump, even though Beck has been trashing Trump for months by calling him a pseudo-conservative and a “son of a b—-.”
“There are signs that many voters and commentators have at least started to move on [from Trump],” the story said, leading into the Beck quote as if it were a change in attitude by the TV and radio show host.
Barbaro’s story followed other reports that suggest Trump, who for three months has led the Republican presidential field in both national and state-level polls, is quickly waning in popularity.
“Surveys show fading support for Donald Trump,” read a headline on the Huffington Post last week.
“Republicans Don’t Like Donald Trump As Much As They Used To,” declared the statistics-driven news site FiveThirtyEight.
On Sep. 27, a blog post at the Washington Post delcared Trump’s “decline is clear.” That came three days after a separate blog post said, “Donald Trump’s slide in the polls is beginning to look real.”
After one of the GOP debates in September, BuzzFeed said Trump’s performance “was a bit less loud than usual, peevish instead of commanding at times, and even — maybe? — a bit low-energy…” The report went on to bolster the point by citing Republican operatives (all of whom worked on competing campaigns) who said it was a bad night for Trump.
It’s true that Trump’s seemingly endless rise in polls and media coverage has leveled out and, in some cases, taken a dip. But he still maintains the lead in recent polls and usually by a large margin in a crowd of 13 other candidates.
On Tuesday, Quinnipiac University released a new poll showing Trump leading his Republican opponents in important battleground states that will decide who wins the general election. Among Republican voters in Florida, Trump currently has 28 percent of the vote. In second is Ben Carson with 16 percent.
In Ohio, Trump has 23 percent and Carson, in second, has 18 percent.
In Pennsylvania, Trump had 23 percent and Carson had 17.
“Those who were waiting for Donald Trump’s campaign to collapse will need to wait longer — at least in the three key states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania,” Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll, said in a statement.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll released over the weekend also found that Trump was still leading in early primary states Iowa and New Hampshire.
In Iowa, Trump was at 24 percent and in second was Ben Carson at 19 percent. In New Hampshire, Trump had 21 percent and Carly Fiorina was in second with 16 percent.
Nationally, the RealClearPolitics average on Wednesday showed Trump at 23 percent. Ben Carson came in second at 17 percent. At his peak less than a month ago, Trump had as much as 30 percent of the vote based on the RealClearPolitics average. But support for Carson has also fallen somewhat, and both drops reflect a rising Fiorina.
But the press seems to see the end of Trump’s candidacy.
“You definitely felt a desire from the media, the hive mind, to declare the second debate the start of Trump’s decline,” said Washington Post political reporter Dave Weigel in an email to the Washington Examiner media desk. He said, however, that Trump’s media coverage may have taken a turn from “frenzied” to more negative when reporters took a break from the campaign to cover Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S. in late September.
Weigel added, “Absolutely it’s too quick to call it over for Trump.”
Trump himself commented on media coverage of his poll numbers during a mid-September campaign rally in Dallas, Texas. “Everybody’s ‘surging’ but me,” he said with a hint of sarcasm, after rattling off several polls that showed him leading the field.
Another reporter who covers the 2016 campaign but who requested anonymity said he saw a similar tendency among the national media to prematurely write off Trump.
“The collective media is probably tired of the Summer of Trump campaign narrative and is eager for a new one,” the reporter said. “Poll results aren’t exciting to write up if they’ve been plateauing for weeks.”
“The political press is always eager to read too much into the tiniest of the hourly tea leaves,” said the reporter, “despite the fact that the presidential election changes very little from month to month.”
