When you see stories that President Trump is trailing in the polls, it’s natural to scoff and say, “The polls all said Trump would lose four years ago.” That’s a fine retort, and it’s worth considering the extent and the reasons for the polls “getting it wrong” in 2016. Why should 2016 be any different from 2020?
It’s a big question (for one thing, though, Trump didn’t actually get more votes than Hillary Clinton), and here we’ll look at just one aspect of the difference. I think this is key to reading the lay of the land: Joe Biden is not hated as much as Clinton was.
Put another way, Trump is doing about the same as he was doing in 2016, but Biden is doing much better than Clinton was.
First, here’s what’s the same: From March 1, 2016, through Labor Day, Trump’s poll average was between 40% and 44% almost the entire six months, with lots of ups and downs. This year? Since March 1, Trump’s poll average has been between 40% and 44% almost the entire time.
So what’s different?
In that six month period in 2016, Clinton was averaging between 44% and 49% (in two-way polls) almost the whole time. Biden, in contrast, has often been above 50% in the RealClearPolitics average and has never spent almost the entire time averaging about 48%.
Put it another way: Biden has never averaged below 46.8% since March 1, and Clinton was averaging below 46.8% the entire summer of 2018.
Trump is struggling, not so much from the lack of love for Trump, there’s little new on that front, but from the lack of disdain for Biden.
My colleague Jim Antle wrote about this problem, in a piece headlined “Trump’s Biden problem: People don’t hate him like they did Hillary Clinton.”
Antle adds this data: “A recent Fox News poll found that 53% of registered voters have a favorable impression of Biden, compared to 44% unfavorable. Other polls show higher unfavorable numbers for Biden, suggesting Trump campaign attacks are beginning to take their toll. But the RealClearPolitics national average still has his net favorability at -1.6%, while Trump’s stands at -14.3%. Biden’s numbers are also noticeably better than top congressional leaders of both parties, including Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and Chuck Schumer.”
By comparison, Clinton’s favorability was in the low 40s throughout 2016, and she had net negative favorability in the double digits.
So why did Trump do better than the polls in 2016? You don’t need to say the polls were all wrong. You just need to realize that more than 15% of the electorate didn’t like either candidate, and half of them broke for Trump. This year, with Biden at or near 50% in the polls, is leaving a lot fewer undecideds on the table for Trump to try and win over.
If Election Day looks like today does (if somehow, we don’t get about a dozen world-changing stories between now and then), Trump will lose, and not because people turned away from him, but because he drew a much less hated opponent.
