| | | Prepare for a Biden landslide n The biggest warning sign for Trump’s reelection: He’s starting to see softening support from his base.
Josh Kraushaar @HOTLINEJOSH June 23, 2020, 8 p.m.
President Trump’s weekend rally in red-state Oklahoma, featuring empty seats, a canceled outdoor event, and a rambling speech that failed to land many punches against Joe Biden, is a foreboding sign that his once rock-solid base is softening in the run-up to the election. Dealing with the triple threat of a pandemic, frayed race relations, and a battered economy, even some of the president’s supporters are questioning whether he’s up for the job.
The latest Fox News poll, showing Biden with a 12-point lead over Trump, offers the latest hint that some of the president’s closest allies are starting to lose the faith.
The Supreme Court’s ruling protecting gay and transgender employees from discrimination, with the majority opinion written by Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch, threatens to further dispirit Trump’s base. When the president mentioned Gorsuch’s name at his Tulsa rally, there were scattered boos in the crowd, presumably expressing dissatisfaction with his recent ruling.
Indeed, Trump is seeing a little bit of slippage among white evangelical voters, the core constituency that fueled his victory in 2016. His approval rating among that voting bloc is 72 percent, with fewer than half “strongly approving” of his performance in office. The president is only winning 66 percent of the vote against Biden in a head-to-head matchup, with the former vice president tallying 25 percent support with evangelicals.
For context, Trump won the evangelical vote by a 64-point margin against Hillary Clinton, 80 to 16 percent. Winning two-thirds of the vote may sound impressive, but slipping 14 points in four years is a major problem.
Rural voters also comprised another solid bloc of Trump’s support in the 2016 election, handing him 61 percent of the vote. But the Fox poll shows Trump only winning 49 percent of the rural vote this time around, holding a mere 9-point lead over Biden. His 53 percent job approval with these small-town voters is barely above water.
The worsening coronavirus spread in rural areas coupled with growing economic worries in the farm belt all but guarantee that Trump will struggle to match his dominant performance four years ago.
Even some self-described conservatives are showing a willingness to support Biden. The former vice president is winning 22 percent of their vote against Trump. Trump carried 81 percent of the conservative vote in 2016, but is now holding a 71 percent job approval among them.
And while Trump has maintained his hold on the Republican Party—boasting an 87 percent approval rating among intraparty voters in the Fox poll— it’s worth noting that fewer voters self-identify as Republicans these days. Some disaffected Bush and Romney supporters now consider themselves independents. Trump’s approval among independents in the Fox poll? A dismal 29 percent.
For a president who has relied on a base-first strategy at all costs, hoping to win reelection without courting new voters, even the slightest slippage among rock-solid Republicans is alarming. The revelations from former Trump national security adviser John Bolton’s new book may not matter to Trump’s hardcore base, but there are plenty of softer Republican voters already close to breaking away.
So what does it all mean for the November election? Right now, it looks more likely that Biden will win a landslide victory, picking up states uncontested by Democrats in recent elections, than it is that Trump can mount a miraculous turnaround in just over four months. Even as Trump tries to advance a law-and-order pitch amid growing violence and tumult in the nation’s cities, it’s unlikely to benefit the president because he’s the leader in charge. The chaos candidate is now the chaos president. Biden is the challenger pledging a return to normalcy.
Just look at the swing-state map: Biden is leading in every battleground state, according to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, with the exception of North Carolina where the race is tied. Trump trails by 6 points in the electoral prize of Florida, where the president’s newfound willingness to meet with Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro prompted a fierce backlash and quick White House retreat. He’s down 4 points in Arizona, a state that has only voted for a Democratic presidential candidate once since 1964. He’s not close to hitting even 45 percent of the vote in Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin—the Midwestern states he flipped to win the presidency.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is airing ads in Iowa and Ohio, two states he won by near double-digit margins in 2016, as recent polls show Trump in precarious shape in both states. Public polling even shows Biden within striking distance in Georgia and Texas, two electoral prizes that would normally be safely Republican ... unless a big blue wave hits in November.
Right now, Biden leads Trump by 10 points in the RCP national average, a greater margin than former President Obama’s 7-point landslide victory over John McCain 12 years ago. A best-case Biden scenario would net him 413 electoral votes, which would be more than any presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush’s rout of Michael Dukakis in 1988.
Trump made history in 2016 with his stunning come-from-behind upset against Clinton. He’s at risk of making a different kind of political history unless he’s able to suddenly turn his fortunes around.
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