Main page    Aug. 27

Pres map
Previous | Next | Senate page

New polls: VA
Dem pickups: AZ FL GA MI NC PA TX WI
GOP pickups: (None)
We have many readers in the Gulf States. You may or may not be able to see this today, but if you somehow do, good luck, be well, and our thoughts are with you.

Conventional, Night Three

While the Trump campaign mixed it up a bit on night two, they were back to a very standard convention format on night three: long/longish speeches, only a few of them from "regular folks," with the occasional video clip interspersed. Anyhow, here are our impressions:

Anyhow, the stage is set for a very interesting, and potentially fraught, night four—if it happens. (Z)

No Convention Bounce for Biden

Historically, candidates get a small bounce after their conventions. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll is the latest to show that Joe Biden didn't get any at all. He leads Donald Trump 47% to 40% among registered voters after the convention, the same as before the convention.

In contrast, Hillary Clinton got a 4-point boost from her convention in 2016 and Trump got a 4-point boost from his convention in 2016 as well. These almost always fade within a few weeks, though. Probably the reasons that Biden didn't get a boost are: (1) fewer people watched this year than last time, (2) nearly all of them were Democrats anyway, and (3) views are so hardened now that they are not likely to move much at all, barring a major unexpected event. Also significant is that only 14% of the voters are undecided this year vs. 22% last cycle. Many polls have shown even fewer undecideds than this one.

The poll also found that 41% of Americans approve of Trump's performance in office vs. 55% who disapprove. Voters see Biden as stronger on fighting the pandemic and restoring trust in government. Trump is stronger on the economy. (V)

Trump Goes Dark

No, we don't mean more talk of American carnage, or gloom and doom. In fact, as noted, he didn't even talk during last night's festivities. What we mean is that he's stopped advertising on TV. In the past 2 weeks, Joe Biden is outspending him 5-to-1 on the air nationwide. In the key states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, Trump has ceded the airwaves entirely to Biden. In Wisconsin, Biden is outspending him 8-to-1. And Trump has no plans to go back on the air until September.

Part of the reason is that Biden has raised so much money that Trump's long-standing cash advantage has dwindled to just $20 million. Also, Republican strategists see no point in advertising during their own convention. Of course, the great majority of Democrats and independents aren't watching the GOP convention, so all they are seeing are Biden ads. Some Republicans have noticed this and are angry at the Republican super PACs that haven't picked up the ball. Corey Lewandowski, Trump's first 2016 campaign manager, and one of the only ones to be un-indicted, said: "With 70 days to go in a campaign, all of the people who have raised money on behalf of Donald Trump's name should be spending it to support his campaign right now." David Bossie, Trump's former deputy campaign manager, also called out the super PACs and told them to get going. On the other hand, new campaign manager Bill Stepien said he intentionally paused all the ads to reassess the situation. He intends to focus very soon on the early voting states rather than on the swing states.

Still, Stepien had better step on it. Biden is also dominating advertising in the early voting states. In fact, he has outspent Trump by a factor of three in North Carolina, where absentee voting begins next week. Biden has also outspent Trump in Arizona and Florida. To some Republicans, the situation is an eerie throwback to 2012, when Barack Obama was on the air all summer and Mitt Romney wasn't. Romney never caught up. Biden spokesman Michael Gwin observed that the other guys promised the Death Star and instead we got the Titanic. (V)

What Do Trump Supporters Care About?

Supporters of Joe Biden typically read, watch, and listen widely. The New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and other sources are popular with them. Still, despite all this information, they can't figure out how Trump supporters could stand someone they see as a gross, racist, misogynist, dangerous, authoritarian buffoon. Those who have read this article in the Times will find out. If you missed it, here is the executive summary.

Times reporters scoured the country to conduct lengthy interviews with Trump supporters, some of whom were quite happy to be named and even photographed for the story. None of them fit the stereotype of a redneck yahoo with 6 teeth living in a trailer park. Many were normal suburbanites. From the interviews, the reporters distilled some of the reasons these people voted for Trump in 2016 and will enthusiastically vote for him in November. These include:

That's not all of it, of course, and there are some things nobody was willing to own up to, but other reporters have often noted. In particular, Trump hates the people they hate. No other politician has had the guts to mock liberals, media reporters, scientists, experts of all stripes, academics, and all other elites. They simply don't see that he is a billionaire New Yorker who for decades tried mightily (without much success) to ingratiate himself with precisely the elites they hate. Now it is the time for revenge. (V)

"Suburban Housewives" Aren't Buying What Trump Is Selling

Donald Trump never misses an opportunity to try to scare suburban women, who he thinks are all "housewives," with stories of hordes of Black marauders coming to their idyllic communities to burn, loot, and pillage everything in sight. One of the things he keeps repeating is that Joe Biden wants to destroy the suburbs. What he is referring to is an Obama-era program that would encourage the construction of low-income housing in suburban areas. Presumably, this is where the marauders would be based. Trump often warns the women about low-income housing being "forced down their throats." On Monday, Mark and Patricia McCloskey spoke at the Republican National Convention to make the point that what happened to them could happen to you.

The only problem with this approach is that it is not working. Politico sent some anthropologically minded reporters out to the suburbs to see if the natives were quaking in their (garden) boots. Short answer: They weren't. One woman they talked to, Susan Sandler (59), was actually mugged by a Black man in a parking garage a few years ago and even she didn't take the bait. She said: "It's just Trump's rhetoric to try to scare people." Camerin Allgood McKinnon (36), who, like Sandler, lives in suburban Charlotte, was asked if she was afraid of the city. She said: "Afraid of the city? I'm here because of its proximity to Charlotte." Sue Rankin-White (72) said: "I haven't heard anyone voice concerns about being afraid that angry mobs are going to come out this way." Connie Searle (61) said: "It's not something I'm afraid of." These women are all Democrats and Trump is not peeling them off. What about Republican women? Meredith Wolverton posted a string of pro-Trump comments on her Twitter timeline. When the reporter asked if she was scared of an "invasion" of crime from Charlotte, she flatly said "no." In short, the reporter didn't find anyone who was frightened by Trump's dark threats.

Going into the 2018 election, the Charlotte suburb was represented in the state House, state Senate, and county commission by three Republican men. Now it is represented by three Democratic women. One of them, state Sen. Natasha Marcus, said: "I want affordable housing. Because guess who lives in affordable housing? Teachers. Police officers." Another of the three new Democrats, state Rep. Christy Clark, said: "What I am hearing is a lot of people are concerned about coronavirus and how that's going to impact their families." A North Carolina Democratic strategist, Morgan Jackson, said Trump "is having a conversation that frankly only exists on Fox News. It doesn't exist in any neighborhood in the suburbs." A political scientist at nearby Catawba College, Michael Bitzer, said: "It's appealing to June Cleaver ... when June Cleaver is dead." So at least in the Charlotte suburbs, and probably in many other ones, Trump is getting no traction at all with the "housewives," except, of course, among those who are already voting for him. (V)

LeBron James Is Launching a Multimillion-Dollar Campaign to Recruit Poll Workers

One of the problems that plagued the primaries was the lack of poll workers. In Milwaukee, a city of 600,000, there were only five polling places, rather than the usual 180, due to a shortage of poll workers. Couple this with a fear among some Black voters that there will be voter intimidation at the polls, and all of this could add up to seriously suppressing the Black vote.

NBA star LeBron James, among the nation's most prominent Black men, is setting up a group to do something about this. The group, More Than a Vote, is going to recruit young Black folks to work as poll workers, especially in Black communities in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and other states. James has lined up corporations to buy TV, radio, and digital ads recruiting young poll workers. He is also working with sports teams to allow their fields and arenas to be used as polling places, where many people could vote and still observe social distancing. In addition, James said that the group would pay the fees of some of the former felons in Florida who needed to pay their court fees in order to vote. Having such a high-profile and widely respected Black star athlete leading the effort will undoubtedly give the group plenty of PR. (V)

Hundreds of Thousands of Seniors in Nursing Homes May Not Be Able to Vote

Over 2 million Americans live in nursing homes or assisted living homes. All are over 18 and nearly all are citizens. Americans over 65 are very engaged in politics, with a turnout rate of 66% in 2016, compared to a mere 35% for the 18-to-29 crowd. But this year, many of them won't be able to vote.

The problem, of course, is COVID-19, which is running rampant in nursing homes and has killed 68,000 residents so far and counting. In past years, friends and family helped them vote, for example by taking the absentee ballot mailed to the nursing home and bringing it to the post office. This year, most nursing homes have banned visitors, so even if a resident gets an absentee ballot, there is no way to turn it in. Many states prohibit nursing home staff from "helping" residents vote in order to prevent partisan staff members from getting residents to sign the return envelope and then filling out the actual ballot themselves. Federal law states that the staff is required to respect residents' rights, but help with voting is spotty at best, and during a pandemic is not a high priority.

Before the pandemic hit, almost half the states offered nursing home residents voting assistance in the form of a bipartisan team of trained voting deputies who visited the homes and helped people, some of whom suffered from dementia, to vote. Florida, which has a large population of seniors, had such a program. However, on account of COVID-19 it has been abolished to prevent the deputies bringing the disease into nursing homes.

How this will affect the election is not clear. In the past, the senior vote favored Republicans, but this year many seniors do not feel safe, and the person who invariably gets the blame is the fellow who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, D.C. (V)

Michigan May Mail Absentee Ballot Application to All Registered Voters

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) wants to mail every registered voter an application for an absentee ballot. Republican leaders don't want her to and sued her. Yesterday, a Michigan court threw out their case, ruling that as the state's chief election officer, she is authorized to make that decision, even if some of the local election clerks don't like it.

Michigan voters do not have to vote absentee. They are free to toss the ballot application into the recycling bin and go to the polls to vote in person if they prefer. Still, it is expected that during the pandemic, many voters will take advantage of absentee voting since all they have to do is fill in, sign, and return the request form to get a ballot. Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska, and West Virginia are all doing the same thing. (V)

Kanye West Failed to Qualify for the November Ballot in Missouri

Kanye West's presidential campaign/PR stunt is busy trying to get on the ballot in as many states as possible. The goal is to get Black voters who might otherwise vote for Biden to vote for Kanye. Or is it to sell more albums? It's one or the other. In any case, he won't be on the ballot in Missouri. He needed 10,000 valid signatures but got only 6,557, according to Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R). The deadline is now past, so he won't make it there.

So far, West has qualified in Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont. None of these are swing states with large numbers of Black voters. So, if the goal was to help Trump, thus far it is not working. If the goal is to sell albums, it might be working, we don't know. But there is still hope for West. The deadline for North Dakota is next week. The deadlines for Arizona, Delaware, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island fall between Sept. 1 and Sept. 4. In all the other states, it has passed. The only remaining state where West could be a factor is Arizona, which requires 37,769 signatures to get on the ballot. Given that he couldn't muster even 7,000 in Missouri, getting nearly 38,000 in Arizona, whose population is roughly the same size as Missouri's, could be a steep climb up Humphreys Peak. (V)

Green Party Will Not Be on the Montana Ballot

Missouri isn't the only state in the news for not putting some person or party on the ballot. The Green Party is trying to get on the ballot in Montana (and all the other states). Republicans helped in Montana in the hope it would pull votes away from the Democrats. When the Montana Democratic Party got wind of this, it urged Democrats who signed the petition to withdraw their support. Many of them did.

However, Montana Secretary of State Cory Stapelton (R) refused to accept their withdrawals, so state Democrats sued. A lower court and the state Supreme Court said that if people change their minds and actively want to withdraw their signature before the deadline, the secretary of state must honor that. The number of withdrawn signatures put the Green Party below the cutoff to get on the ballot.

Stapelton appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying, once you've signed, you've signed. There's no going back. But the Supreme Court didn't agree. Justice Elena Kagan issued an order upholding the Montana Supreme Court's ruling. This means that the Green Party will not appear on the Montana ballot in November.

While Donald Trump is favored to win the state's three electoral votes, the Senate race there is a toss-up, and if Democrat Steve Bullock were to lose even a couple of percent to the Green candidate, that could be just enough to save the neck of Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT). Thus the Supreme Court decision slightly increases the chances that Bullock will win and the Democrats will capture the Senate.

The absence of the Green Party could also help the Democrats win Montana's lone House seat. It is an open seat because Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-MT) is running for governor. The Democratic candidate is former state representative Kathleen Williams. The Republican candidate is state auditor Matt Rosendale. The last time the Democrats won the seat was in 1992, but they often win Senate seats in Montana. In fact, Daines is the first Republican to win the class 2 seat in over 100 years and Conrad Burns was the only Republican to occupy the class 1 seat in over 65 years. (V)

Stephanie Bice Will Face Kendra Horn in OK-05

Rep. Kendra Horn (D-OK) won a surprise upset in OK-05 in 2018. The district is R+10 and has been represented by a Republican for decades. Naturally there was a tough (nine-way) primary for the Republican nomination. No one got 50% so there was a runoff Tuesday between state Sen. Stephanie Bice and businesswoman Terry Neese. Bice won it 52% to 48% and is now on track to knock off Horn and pick up a House seat for the GOP.

Horn won the seat in 2018 because suburban women in the Oklahoma City area district saw the race as man vs. woman, not Republican vs. Democrat, and voted for the woman. This November, Horn doesn't have that edge. However, Horn does have one advantage going into the general election: money. She has $2.6 million in the bank compared to $100,000 for Bice. Still, Democrats don't usually win races in Oklahoma, including in R+10 districts like OK-05. (V)

Elections Were Not Always Close

Currently, Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump by about 10 points in the national polls. Many observers expect the race to tighten during the fall. In addition, shenanigans involving the Postal Service slowing down the mail, the unfamiliarity of many Democrats with absentee voting, the prevalence of COVID-19 among minorities, and various kinds of voter suppression will likely make the margin even smaller.

Many people have come to expect that every election is a cliffhanger, but that has not always been the case. Since WW II, there have been many blow-outs. The graphs below show that. The one on the left shows the winning margin of the two-party vote (i.e, winner's total divided by the sum of the Democratic and Republican votes) since 1948. As you can see, it has been over 15% four times. The graph on the right shows the electoral vote margin. Four times since WW II the winner has beaten the loser by over 400 electoral votes. However, the red regression lines in both cases show that elections have been tightening over the years.

Historical margins

The reasons elections have tightened is that nowadays campaigns generally play it safe and aim for a modest win by targeting demographic groups and states they have a decent chance of winning. It's all about microtargeting, a concept that would have been unthinkable to candidates like Adlai Stevenson, who spoke about what he believed in and hoped for the best. Campaigns now are constantly polling, running ads, and polling again to see if anything changed. If so, the campaign is tweaked a little. If some state looks like it is lost, the campaign abandons it and moves on to another state that looks more promising. Campaigns didn't work at all like this in the old days. Republican strategist Karl Rove once said: "Republicans should run the most conservative candidate who can win." Republican campaigns now run the most conservative campaign they can and still hope to win. Democrats do the exact inverse. When a campaign deviates from this principle, as Barry Goldwater did in 1964 and George McGovern did in 1972, they get clobbered. So barring some surprises (in a year that has yielded one surprise after another), we could have another close election. (V)

Today's Presidential Polls

In case you had forgotten that Virginia, once the capital of the Confederacy, is now basically South Maryland, this poll should remind you. (V)

State Biden Trump Start End Pollster
Virginia 53% 39% Aug 09 Aug 22 Roanoke Coll.

Today's Senate Polls

Mark Warner gets all the Democrats but Daniel Gade doesn't get all the Republicans because nobody knows who he is. (V)

State Democrat D % Republican R % Start End Pollster
Virginia Mark Warner* 55% Daniel Gade 34% Aug 09 Aug 22 Roanoke Coll.

* Denotes incumbent


Previous | Next

Main page for smartphones

Main page for tablets and computers