Two Big Challenges Left: The Election is Joe Biden's to Lose

With 37 days left, Trump has the hallmarks of a losing candidate; Biden probably has to blow this to lose.

37 days until the election, Joe Biden’s strength with white voters—compared to Hillary Clinton in 2016—makes him a strong favorite to win the election.

As Harry Enten of CNN noted:

Trump is winning by about 21 points among Whites without a college degree in an average of those polls. That may seem like a lot, but remember that Trump led among this group by about 30 points in the final pre-election polls in 2016.

Dave Wasserman of Cook Political and NBC also mentioned how turnout alone isn’t enough to save Trump right now:

But Trump might need to boost noncollege white turnout by about 5 points — from 55 percent to 60 percent nationally — just to offset the impact of their dwindling share of the electorate and get back to the same 306 electoral votes he won in 2016.

At the moment, Trump's bigger problem is that Biden is winning more noncollege whites than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Biden losing them by 23 points, whereas exit polls showed Clinton losing them by 37 points. That would be more than enough to offset modest gains Trump has made since 2016 among Hispanics and other nonwhites.

Today’s 538 model produces this result:

Trump’s numbers aren’t in-line with a president winning another term. YouGov’s crosstabs have rather large sample sizes, which makes them more reliable. Those numbers—as they have all summer—paint a grim picture for Trump. 56% of people say that Trump does not care about people like you. In contrast to 2016 when 47% of voters described him as conservative or very conservative, 53% describe him that way now. Voters’ perception of his handling of the coronavirus are awful. 58% are uneasy about the way he’s handling the virus and 55% disapprove of his handling of COVID-19 (those seem fairly synonymous to me, but I guess you could be uneasy about how he’ll react to future events while not disapproving of his current performance).

Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination is one avenue Trump might get back in the race. Given Trump is trailing in all major aggregators, and he even trails among pollsters in the Great Lakes that have been biased toward the GOP, this new event offers the potential for Trump to change the focus of the race from his handling of the coronavirus or his demeanor. As I wrote on July 19th when looking at how Trump might come back:

Finally, a Supreme Court vacancy could help Trump. If someone retires or dies, it could rally Republicans to support the party. Marsha Blackburn trailed in Tennessee throughout the summer of 2018, but around the Kavanaugh nomination, she took the lead. Any Supreme Court battle would be toxic, especially if Trump gets to replace a liberal justice after Republicans blocked Merrick Garland in 2016. If that happens, Republicans that dislike Trump’s demeanor and response to the virus might return to the party.

The challenge for Trump with the vacancy is that the two central issues Democrats should make the nomination about, abortion and Obamacare, favor the Democrats. Wasserman believes 22% of Trump’s 2016 voters are pro-choice. In YouGov’s polling, 53% don’t want to see Roe overturned. Although Obamacare was deeply unpopular in 2010 and helped the GOP win some races in 2014, opinions on the law changed. Most spending programs become more popular over time, and Obamacare has followed that trajectory. YouGov and Fox News both polled about Obamacare in July and August. The law had 52% support and was +9 and +10 in the two surveys. In a Kaiser Health Foundation poll from earlier in 2020 (we don’t have as much polling as you’d expect on Obamacare), only 38% approved of Trump’s effort to overturn the law at the Supreme Court and 57% disapproved.

The Democrats and Biden could still blow this race. A central question about incumbent presidential races is whether they’re referendums on the incumbent or choices between the candidates. While we could spend all day debating that, the reality is that the incumbent’s support tends to set the baseline for whatever bar the challenger needs to clear. In 2004 and 2012, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were at 48% and 52%, respectively. Bush was able to narrowly beat back John Kerry, and Obama had enough support that he overwhelmed Mitt Romney in the Big 10 (minus Nebraska).

I’ve argued for a while that this race most closely parallels the 1980 election. The American people were certainly willing to vote out the incumbent after he won a narrow first term. In 1980, Carter dealt with the Iran hostage crisis, and in 2020, Trump has COVID-19. The public distrusted both leaders on the issue. As negative polarization (the dislike of the other side) has increased, Biden has no shot of winning as broad of a victory as Carter did in 1980. But he does face a similar to task to Reagan in 1980: does the public believe he can manage being president?

Trump’s made that attack on two basic levels. First, he argues Biden is secretly controlled by the far left. That attack hasn’t worked so far. Currently only 44% of voters describe Biden as liberal or very liberal. But 18% are not sure how to classify Biden politically. Even with 48 years in public life, opinions of Biden might be more malleable than the conventional wisdom. Biden will have to avoid being seen as too far to the left. He’s not winning by inspiring millions of new young voters. He currently has a healthy lead in the Rust Belt (he leads right now in Ohio; a state Trump won by eight points in 2016) and is performing by doing well with Obama-Trump voters.

Second, Trump is arguing that Biden is too old. Reagan faced a similar challenge in 1980 (more pronounced in 1984 before his big moment against Walter Mondale). Biden will be the oldest president ever. People can castigate Biden for not spending much time in public. But the biggest remaining challenge for Biden is to display a minimum level of cognition to convince folks—that might culturally dislike the left, but also detest Trump’s behavior and feel he’s too tied to the corporate wing of the Republican Party—that he’s up to being president as he approaches 80. This has been a dangerous attack for Trump because his numbers with seniors are anemic, and it’s also not that tough for Biden to pass it. If he references a few things from the past and has quick responses in the debates, he can meet that burden. When you argue your opponent is incapable because he’s senile, it doesn’t take much to show the opponent is mentally competent.

Biden and the Democrats could still blow this. The Supreme Court confirmation battle presents a great opportunity to advance their arguments, which are supported by more of the public than the Republicans’ positions. The three debates also give Biden a chance to demonstrate he’s not too far to the left or incapable of handling the demands of the office. But the Big 12’s start to the football season has shown that plenty of favorites can blow leads to troubled opponents.

If the Democrats and Biden are discussing Obamacare and Roe, they’re winning. Any time they spend discussing Amy Coney Barrett’s personality or faith is a disaster. Biden and the party have to spend the last 37 days playing like they have the lead. If they do that, they should win the election.

You can follow Kendall on twitter @kendallkaut. You can subscribe to the newsletter, which will publish at least weekly on the election and politics at https://kendallkaut.substack.com