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Trump Doesn’t Pivot
Is Trump unwilling, or unable, to change course?
Another day, another less-than-ideal poll for the incumbent.
A new Monmouth poll has the president down 12 points to Biden. While polls are notoriously untrustworthy — particularly four months from an election — I did see this nugget from CNN’s Harry Enten, “polls taken around Independence Day in an election year are actually pretty highly correlated with the November results in incumbent contests. That means Trump is in a lot of trouble…since 1940, the median difference is only about 4.5 points.”
Further adding to Trump’s troubles is that modern elections tend to be less fluctuating than earlier, less partisan elections. Thank polarization for that.
What this means for President Trump is that there is very little wiggle room for him to maneuver here.
Think of it this way — Trump secured the 2016 election by narrowly winning Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by 0.2%, 0.7%, and 0.8%, respectively. Combined, that’s fewer than 80,000 votes in an election which almost three million more people voted for his opponent. And since that election day, he has become even more unpopular and polarizing.
The playbook for a successful Trump re-election campaign is self-apparent. Get the virus under control…
