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A common theme seen in the media and on this forum is the notion that trump's support is in free-fall. There is, however, zero evidence to support this. From 538's polling average of likely and registered voters:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/voters/
The red vertical line represents May 18, a week after trump fired James Comey. In the 245 days since then there has been no trend downwards, but we've seen enough of a pattern to reasonably interpret its meaning. After May 18, there’s been a regular fluctuation from lows of 37.3% to highs of 42.3%. Certainly these fluctuations are responding to news cycles, but what does the regular 5% variance mean? This is the percentage of trump's base that doesn't like aspects of his behavior but will do anything to believe he's a good president. They may experience temporary doubt, but they want to believe they were justified in their decision to vote for him.
Trump's hard core base on election day is around 38%, but only if you’re depending on whatever it is that makes the 5% lose their enthusiasm for him happen at precisely the right time before the election, and that’s a dangerous gamble. The smarter mindset is to accept the Sun Tzu philosophy that "He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them," and assume that the wavering 5% will vote Republican again, bringing trump's real approval to 42.3%. Otherwise, we're in for a repeat of November 2016 when we all kicked back, watched the polls and smirked knowing Clinton would win.
But there were two problems with the polls (and no, it's not that they were wrong):
1) National polling doesn’t take into account the electoral college, and therefore doesn't deal with the geographic distribution of voters. We have the same problem now that we did a year ago: the majority of left-leaning voters are concentrated in urban areas of blue states. This is why we lost the electoral vote handily in spite of winning the popular election by 2.8 million votes. That said, the Democratic voters are still there in the red states, as demonstrated so remarkably in Alabama.
2) The response to the polling may have been honest, but it didn't take into account the excited vs. depressed turnout factor. This was’t lost on Michael Moore, who predicted the trump victory due solely to Republicans’ enthusiasm for trump while Democrats seemed only resigned to voting for Clinton.
So has anything changed a year later? Absolutely. Unlike 2016, Democrats are energized. While Obama focused his base with a message of hope, trump has focused the Democrats' rage into a perfect laser beam of purpose. Trump has put a face on everything wrong with the Republican Party and its policies, and it could be said that his greatest accomplishment was removing the thin mask of respectability they’ve maintained for decades. As a result, we are now as enthusiastic about kicking the Republican Party out of power as we were to put Obama in the Oval Office, with one additional element: we've learned the painful way that the "little" elections matter, demonstrated by the many gains recently made in Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Republicans understood that the base of their power lay in the vast web of thousands of smaller offices, and now we understand that too.
The key to winning Congress back in November is believing that no less than 42.3% of the country will turn out to keep their Republican Congressmen in power, and the only way to counter this is to vote yourself. Better yet, rent a bus and fill it with all your friends, family members and neighbors and vote en masse. Registration is also key as a great number of potential voters will have fallen off the voter rolls due to no fault of their own. A massive effort at registration and knocking on doors was made in Alabama, and combined with energized turnout voters were able to put the first Democrat from Alabama in the US Senate in 25 years.
All of this comes down to energized Democratic turnout and absolutely none whatsoever to depressed Republican turnout. To watch the polls and wait for a Republican abandonment that will never come will hand trump two more years of unchecked power. At that point, enjoy two more years of trump and his supporters grinning back at you after every new scandal that comes out. Because trump is a populist President, and populist Presidents are immune to scandal.
But if Democrats retake just one house of Congress, the Republican legislative agenda will come to a crashing end. And not only that, Democrats will get power of the subpoena, and at that point trump’s life will turn into complete and utter hell. You won’t get the pleasure of seeing him impeached, but watching him become subject to a brutal and ongoing public investigation with real teeth will be enormously fulfilling just the same.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/voters/
The red vertical line represents May 18, a week after trump fired James Comey. In the 245 days since then there has been no trend downwards, but we've seen enough of a pattern to reasonably interpret its meaning. After May 18, there’s been a regular fluctuation from lows of 37.3% to highs of 42.3%. Certainly these fluctuations are responding to news cycles, but what does the regular 5% variance mean? This is the percentage of trump's base that doesn't like aspects of his behavior but will do anything to believe he's a good president. They may experience temporary doubt, but they want to believe they were justified in their decision to vote for him.
Trump's hard core base on election day is around 38%, but only if you’re depending on whatever it is that makes the 5% lose their enthusiasm for him happen at precisely the right time before the election, and that’s a dangerous gamble. The smarter mindset is to accept the Sun Tzu philosophy that "He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them," and assume that the wavering 5% will vote Republican again, bringing trump's real approval to 42.3%. Otherwise, we're in for a repeat of November 2016 when we all kicked back, watched the polls and smirked knowing Clinton would win.
But there were two problems with the polls (and no, it's not that they were wrong):
1) National polling doesn’t take into account the electoral college, and therefore doesn't deal with the geographic distribution of voters. We have the same problem now that we did a year ago: the majority of left-leaning voters are concentrated in urban areas of blue states. This is why we lost the electoral vote handily in spite of winning the popular election by 2.8 million votes. That said, the Democratic voters are still there in the red states, as demonstrated so remarkably in Alabama.
2) The response to the polling may have been honest, but it didn't take into account the excited vs. depressed turnout factor. This was’t lost on Michael Moore, who predicted the trump victory due solely to Republicans’ enthusiasm for trump while Democrats seemed only resigned to voting for Clinton.
So has anything changed a year later? Absolutely. Unlike 2016, Democrats are energized. While Obama focused his base with a message of hope, trump has focused the Democrats' rage into a perfect laser beam of purpose. Trump has put a face on everything wrong with the Republican Party and its policies, and it could be said that his greatest accomplishment was removing the thin mask of respectability they’ve maintained for decades. As a result, we are now as enthusiastic about kicking the Republican Party out of power as we were to put Obama in the Oval Office, with one additional element: we've learned the painful way that the "little" elections matter, demonstrated by the many gains recently made in Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Republicans understood that the base of their power lay in the vast web of thousands of smaller offices, and now we understand that too.
The key to winning Congress back in November is believing that no less than 42.3% of the country will turn out to keep their Republican Congressmen in power, and the only way to counter this is to vote yourself. Better yet, rent a bus and fill it with all your friends, family members and neighbors and vote en masse. Registration is also key as a great number of potential voters will have fallen off the voter rolls due to no fault of their own. A massive effort at registration and knocking on doors was made in Alabama, and combined with energized turnout voters were able to put the first Democrat from Alabama in the US Senate in 25 years.
All of this comes down to energized Democratic turnout and absolutely none whatsoever to depressed Republican turnout. To watch the polls and wait for a Republican abandonment that will never come will hand trump two more years of unchecked power. At that point, enjoy two more years of trump and his supporters grinning back at you after every new scandal that comes out. Because trump is a populist President, and populist Presidents are immune to scandal.
But if Democrats retake just one house of Congress, the Republican legislative agenda will come to a crashing end. And not only that, Democrats will get power of the subpoena, and at that point trump’s life will turn into complete and utter hell. You won’t get the pleasure of seeing him impeached, but watching him become subject to a brutal and ongoing public investigation with real teeth will be enormously fulfilling just the same.