Election 2020: Lightning Striking Twice?

 So we are about two weeks away from the election and closer we get to it the more things seem like 2016.  I was told we'd never have an election like that one.  But again, who predicted we'd have 2020 like we have either.  

Think about the last couple weeks:

• About a month before the 2016 election, Donald Trump gets blindsided by the "Access Hollywood" videotape where he jokingly explains sexual assault to Billy Bush.  Trump's polls tank and it looks like Hillary Clinton is about to cruise to a 350+ electoral vote victory.  Now think about 2 weeks ago where Trump contracts Covid-19, the communication of his condition as he works through it is a bit opaque and inconsistent and he comes out of it looking like he's bragging that he recovered quickly and folks should not worry about Covid-19.  This negative news cycle causes the national polls to tank in favor of Joe Biden, who about 10 days ago looked to be heading to a 400 EV victory.  However, one thing was consistent between those two situations.  Trump, who looked to be down and out, starts to show great discipline and tenacity in the consistency of his message as well as the vast increase in the number of rallies. Both times also the rallies were both very large and showed high energy.

• About two weeks before the 2016 election, Clinton was blindsided by the revelation that an inquiry was opened regarding new emails connecting her to alleged felonious activity that showed up on former Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop that was seized by the FBI as part of a sexting scandal Weiner was being investigated.  This created great uproar from Donald's supporters and enthused his base, as well as further raise Clinton's already high unfavorables. In this past week, again about two weeks before the 2020 election, we have learned that Biden's son, Hunter, has a laptop now sent into the FBI that included emails connecting alleged felonious business dealings where Hunter leverage access to Joe with businessmen in Ukraine, Russia and China.  The additional twist here is that after the NY Post broke the story, Twitter and Facebook were quite aggressive in censoring its distribution, including suspending the Twitter account of the White House Press Secretary.  As with Clinton, this news has further enthused Donald's supporters as well as probably raised Biden's unfavorables, which are at a lower level than Hillary's were at this relative part of the election cycle.  

So the question is whether the large momentum swing that these events resulted in 2016 to lead to a Trump victory can be replicated in 2020.  While we wait to see what happens, I will break it down this way: there are two main elements to Trump's campaign strategy. 

• Maximize the enthusiasm of his base.  It was clear in 2016 he was able to do that as his supporters drowned out Clinton's on Election Day 2016.  He was able to motivate new voters, specifically white-working class voters and evangelicals to unite provide him votes with impressive unity. I am seeing signs of that in 2020 with the size and energy of his rallies as well as the Amy Coney Barrett SCOTUS nomination as key drivers to that enthusiasm.  One advantage that Trump does have in 2020 than 2016 is since the party registration numbers in key battleground states are much more favorable to him (read more about that from last week's post), he has a larger poll of potential voters and more possible votes to gain.

• Maximize his opponent's unfavorables. In 2016, Trump focused a large part of his campaign on increasing Clinton's unfavorables by trying to define her as a corrupt political grifter (remember "Crooked Hillary"). The Weiner laptop incident only poured more gasoline into those efforts and they largely worked.  Evidence of that is the increase in working class voters that don't have significant college and graduate education as well as the lack of enthusiasm in Clinton's base, especially amongst Black voters.  Together, this depressed Clinton's votes in urban centers like Detroit that allowed Trump to eek out slim margins in winning states such as MI, PA and WI.  The issues Joe Biden is starting to have with his base are starting to reveal themselves, as he's trying to hold events that will enthuse the votes in urban centers like Detroit and Miami.  We'll see where this story goes.

I've made a couple notable changes on the map:

As you can see, I moved New Hampshire back to Biden and Michigan to Trump, which would allow him to be re-elected.  The New Hampshire change is just a fleeting hunch as that state is hard to read.  However, I haven't seen Trump appear to make any visits there in recent weeks or talk about his chances there.  So I'm wondering if it's a place of focus currently.

Michigan, in my opinion, is starting to trend more strongly towards Donald.  Early voting figures there are very good for Donald and Biden's decision to break his protocol against larger campaign events to do a "voter motivation" event in Detroit as well as do interviews with Detroit radio stations provides some evidence than Biden is quite worried there.  In addition, Michigan has a strong GOP Senate candidate, John James, that should help pour more outside money to support the GOP, aka Trump's, side.  So I am feeling that Trump is strongly trending positive there.

Next week, I'll provide a review of the final debate (if it happens) as well as a preview of what keys I'm watching for on Election Night.  But until next time, it is what it is.