Why do you think Trump has been frothing about mail-in voting? Anything that makes it easier to vote works against him, especially this year.
And where all of this is hurting Trump the most is with independent voters and suburban women. The idea groups like the Lincoln Project will pry GOP voters and his base away misses the point. All of this is causing the independents who sat it out in 2016, or voted GOP because Hillary was anathema to them, to move back toward Biden and the Dems. Hopefully it continues.
But how long did it take for the Tara Reade story to fizzle? If Barr drops some indictments or if accusations comes out 2 weeks before the election will that be enough time to show they are the bullshit they will undoubtedly be?
If the election comes down to a few tens of thousands of people in several battleground states, such an approach may work.
The farther Biden is up the less likely such a scenario occurring will be. At the moment, a 2016 repeat of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania being virtually tied is farfetched.
Trump seems to be assuming the same thing people in this thread are; that what worked then will work now. When the nation suddenly changes by 10 points in a month, the old nudges are obsolete. Trump went from 49% approval in Gallup in May to 38% approval in July. He can’t get back up to 48% approval by slandering Biden.
Two giant crises - three if you include the COVID economic collapse - can’t be countered by the usual political antics. My fear is that Trump will figure this out and decide that dropping a bomb on Iran or North Korea or something equally earthshaking will be that kind of giant counterweight. But that’s what it will take, not slimy ads.
“Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?”
Pew Research Center: 19% of GOPers are satisfied with how things are going in the country.
Like his misogyny was supposed to hurt him with suburban women, his anti-immigrant rhetoric with independents…
If normal applied with Trump, he would have been been a punchline 25 minutes after he came down that escalator not the sitting President of the United States.
As to October surprises in general …
Much of the country has been moving for years towards ever-increasing amounts of mail-in balloting, early voting, etc. COVID put that trend on the boil. And yes, brought out a lot of reactionary opposition from the usual reactionaries.
In at least some states, dropping a surprise on Oct 1 is dropping a surprise after WAG 1/3rd of the vote is already in the can.
So for strategists trying to time their surprise (or simply their advertising surge), the game has a much more spread-out timeline than it used to.
I can see Trump thinking this. But it wouldn’t work for him.
Trump’s biggest liability in this election is people have seen he’s a bad leader in a crisis. Adding another crisis to the situation is just going to give people another reason to vote against him.
It is hurting him with suburban women.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/politics/2020-election-polls-voters-house/index.html
I picked those because they’re most on point but if you set Google to the last month and look for trump approval suburban women you’ll see a string of articles saying the same thing. And it’s true even with white working-class women. Trump’s team is nearly hysterical about the numbers.
As I keep saying, this is not 2016. Trump is already the President, the one responsible for everything in the country. He has, almost lovingly, built up the hate against him. Voters voted their hate in 2016, and Trump hated all the things they did including Hillary Clinton.
Voters hate a lot this year but that doesn’t include Joe Biden. For an increasing number, though, Trump is loathed, women most definitely at the forefront.
The polls will have to be a lot closer for any October Surprise to make an impact like Comey’s nonsense four years ago.
Can at least one person who makes these claims do so with the caveat that Trump was, as a candidate, an unknown quantity? Many who voted him went into it with the idea he would grow into the office and become Presidential (even the media used that to spin his candidacy; Republicans who voted against him harbored such thoughts) and in ways that alienate all but his most basic bass, he has not been up to the task any way you slice it up.
Donald Trump benefited from an unpopular opponent and the fact that he was a Wild Card unknown. Neither of those things are true this time out. Everyone has seen what a Trump presidency means, and most - including some who gave him the benefit of the doubt four years ago - are underwhelmed.
I don’t know if Trump will get elected, but I’m pretty sure Democrats would be stupid to underestimate his chances again. There are plenty of people out there who think like octopus and lump in all Democrats with the anarchists, looters and statue topplers.
Plenty of people, sure. But tens of millions of them? I doubt it.
You have to look at the numbers. Trump came in second place four years ago. He got 63,000,000 votes to Hillary Clinton’s 66,000,000.
Now it’s 2020. Trump is bungling the Covid19 crisis, he’s bungling the race problem, he’s bungling the economy. He’s letting the Russians kill American soldiers. He’s declared his loyalty for the Confederacy. He’s sent troops in to attack a church. And that’s only the things he’s screwed up in the last four months. How many of his 2016 voters has he lost? Will he get 60,000,000 votes? 55,000,000? 50,000,000?
Meanwhile Joe Biden isn’t Hillary Clinton. She got 66,000,000 votes. Biden might get 70,000,000 or more.
As for turning the numbers around, who do you think is going to make more mistakes in the next four months?
Barring catastrophe, Biden is going to win the popular vote by 5-7 million. I only hope the state voting is distributed well enough for that to be sufficient.
A Dallas Morning News poll released yesterday had Biden up 48-43 in Texas.
Lol at anyone who thinks Trump is going to win suburban women this fall.
Dukakis up 17 points in July 88
Thank you for the cite. I would note that was after the Democratic Convention, which typically produces a nice bounce for the candidate. Not a great comparison to polls today, before either convention.
But I do agree Dukakis is probably the best cautionary tale for Biden supporters (except, perhaps, Dewey v. Truman, but that was a long time ago). Particularly if you feel like Biden will prove to be a weak or easily mockable candidate. One would have to quibble with whether Bush Sr. truly counts as an incumbent, but I would probably say yes.
No one poll should be taken as meaningful. All the good sites, like RealClearPolitics.com and FiveThirtyEight.com, aggregate the better polls and produce one moving average.
If you look closely you’ll always see outliers in both directions. Do what the figure skating judges do and knock off the highest and lowest to concentrate just on what’s between. And then look at the long term trend, not whatever happened in the last week.
But where’s the drama and breathless play-by-play excitement in that? 
Folks love to watch the paint dry while treating it like an Olympic-speed ping pong match.
If you compare Biden 2020 to Clinton 2016 using the Real Clear Politics polling average, Biden is clearly entering the home stretch in a better position than Clinton was. Clinton and Trump were in a virtual polling average tie (tie being within the margin of error) at least two or three times by this point in 2016 and Trump actually took the lead after the GOP convention in August before going into a tailspin after his remarks about Khan, followed by the hot mic scandal a month or two later.
Biden has managed to survive allegations of sexual assault and yet Trump hasn’t come any closer than 5 percentage points, which predated the worst of the COVID crisis.
THAT explains why I’ve been having trouble sleeping; my heart’s been beating like a ping-pong match. Might be time to put off worrying about polls, at least for a month or three…