I think you’re probably right that “fear of covid, but don’t want to wear a mask because refraining from doing so has somehow stupidly become a political act in many social circles” was the main factor the rally was poorly attended.
So, I agree there are a lot of people who will vote for Trump, and who might normally attend a rally like this, but not this year.
As always, thanks to our electoral system, all that matters is where these people are concentrated.
I’m guessing that, even without covid, a Tulsa Trump rally now would have had SLIGHTLY less attendance than in (say) 2016. That is, a small part of the lower-than-expected attendance CAN be attributed to folks who voted for Trump in 2016, but won’t in 2020. Some of this smallish group will vote for Biden, but many (maybe most) won’t vote at all.
Of course, it’s the geographic distribution of THESE people that matters most of all. Are there 100,000 of them in Oklahoma, or in California? Doesn’t matter a darn. Are there 100,000 of them in Pennsylvania, or Arizona, or Florida, or Wisconsin? That could change the world.
It’ll be hard to prove this, but I suspect the Tik Tok scheme to snap up the free tickets and then not attend may account for the campaign’s claim of over a million people requesting tickets (followed by only a few thousand actually showing up).
A similar scheme is under way for the upcoming July 4 fireworks show at Mount Rushmore. At Trump’s request the fireworks show was controversially resumed this year after a decade of absence due to concerns about water contamination and wildfire hazards, and Trump will be present at the show. Just like the Tulsa rally, tickets are free, and awarded by lottery to anyone who signed up before June 12. Since this is at a national monument one would hope for a non-partisan event, but since Trump will be there, you know he’s going to try to turn it into another GOP campaign rally. No doubt it’ll be televised - but hopefully the video will convey empty bleachers.
Trump likes to think that he is the sole attraction of these rallies, but he’s really not. Like a screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show or a Grateful Dead concert, the act is the same as the last one you attended. It’s a gathering of a tribe. People go to these things to meet other people like them, and when the people don’t show up - people don’t show up. Two rallies like this in a row, and the tribe has pretty much disbanded.
Possibly combined with awareness that, unless the mask is an N95, wearing one won’t provide much protection to the wearer unless everybody else is wearing one too.
When Trump’s rallies were well-attended shit-fests, I didn’t translate that to mean he was the most popular politician in the country. Now that they are low attendance events, I don’t translate that to mean he is the least popular politician in the country.
However, the importance to me of the low attendance rallies is that it eats at Trump. He places so much value on his mindless, screaming crowds of MAGAbots. The fact that they won’t risk their lives to come cheer him on, may not be as eager to go gun down teh Libs™ in the streets for him as he hoped they would, makes him even more unhinged than he already is. This is becoming apparent even to people who work hard to ignore it.
Those empty seats make him look weak. No one likes cheering for the losing team. Psychologically, it’s a powerful tool against a thin-skinned, insecure L-O-S-E-R.
Exactly, JKellyMap (editing this, thought I quoted you). Trump won PA by about 45k votes. WI by 23k and MI by 11k. That’s .7%, .7% and .3%.
If only 500 fewer people showed up Saturday than the 9000 or so that did in 2016, because they are not going to vote for Trump, that’s about 5%. But actually it was 2300 fewer. And these are hard core Trump supporters.
OK these are very rough estimates of what the turnout Saturday might mean. Maybe it was all due to COVID, plus unreasonable fears of protesters ginned up by FOX. But it’s encouraging, and Saturday was a beautiful disaster. And it may affect people in other states, Trump seems very vulnerable.
Michigan has become reliably blue, the only exception being that very weird 2016 election where it went barely to Trump.
I have to think Biden will do better than H. Clinton. Bernie Sanders had won the democratic primary there and somehow, Trump pulled off a 10k vote win.
My parents are uber-Republican. I’m talking Jerry Falwell level of commitment(well, nearly).
On Saturday, my Dad said he would consider not voting for President or voting Third Party.
I see two things with the rally turnout. One, the Tik-Tok thing is what suckered the campaign into boasting about interest that wasn’t there. That worked out great, fuck the administration. They got rolled, and it was hilarious. The actual attendance, however, was probably not (IMO) affected by this. If there were Trumpers who wanted to be there, they would have been there. I am of the opinion that yes, supporters stayed home for covid-19 related fears.
But the tik-tok thing suckered those guys good into making stupid brags that were unfounded and easily seen as false. DOH!
This kind of thing also happened during the protests in D.C. One day Trump said that he had heard tonight was going to be MAGA night at the White House. An obvious plea to get his supporters to come out and confront the protesters. Of course, no one showed up. That should have been his first clue that they might not take to the streets for him.
