Wednesday, September 2, 2020

The Bump That Didn't Bounce

Enough data have accumulated that we can make the call. Trump is coming out of the convention period in no better shape that when he went in which is to say: very bad. As Philip Bump of the Washington Post notes:
"A Washington Post average of polls conducted immediately before the two conventions had Biden leading Trump 51 percent to 42 percent. With polls released this week after the Republican convention, we can update those numbers.
Biden leads Trump 51 percent to 42 percent."
You can find slightly different averages in other places but the basic message is the same: not much really changed.
This is despite an opening for Trump provided by protest-associated violence which perhaps in the hands of a defter politician could have made for some significant progress. But the deft politician in this case was Biden who effectively countered Trump's attacks, decrying violence on all sides and putting Trump back under the spotlight as the chaos president.
Just how bad is Trump's situation? Consider his failure to turn white noncollege voters his way. In the new CNN poll, he is only leading among them by five (!) points and actually losing to Biden among white noncollege women by 12 points. That's remarkable.
State polls coming in do not look much better. Trump's favorite network, Fox, just dropped three new likely voter state polls and they're basically catastrophic for him in light of the gains he hoped to make:
Arizona: +9 Biden
Wisconsin +8 Biden
North Carolina: +4 Biden
And note that in Wisconsin, even after all the events in Kenosha, Trump's lead among white noncollege voters is a meager 5 points. That's very very far away from what he needs to carry the state even if black turnout is as bad in 2020 as it was in 2016. And it probably won't be.
It looks like Trump's Plan A isn't working. Does he have a Plan B?

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