President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Friday, Feb. 21, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
One of the things that is going to win the election in 2020 is enthusiasm and the ability to turn people out to vote.
As my colleague Elizabeth Vaughn reported, while Democrats have had a good turnout in some of their primaries, the turnout of President Donald Trump in primaries where he effectively had no real challenge was been astonishing and it wasn’t just in red states.
From The Hill:
In Vermont and Minnesota, Trump’s vote totals beat every past incumbent’s total in the last four decades. In Maine, the president’s vote total bested every primary candidate’s total since before President Ronald Reagan. In Massachusetts, the story was similar, with Trump aggregating a higher vote total than past incumbent Republicans since before Reagan.
And in deeply blue California, with 82 percent of precincts reporting, President Trump collected nearly 1.4 million votes.
Turnout numbers similarly showcased the enthusiasm of Republican voters. In Colorado, for example, Republican turnout for Trump on Tuesday was greater than the past three Republican primaries combined.
But that wasn’t the only indication of enthusiasm for Trump.
Fox News did a town hall with the president, the first one that he’s done with them since 2016 and according to Townhall, it was the most watched election Town Hall in cable news history.
Fox News’ town hall with President Trump, co-moderated by anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, dominated the 6:30-7:30 p.m. ET time slot on Thursday for both total viewership and the 25-54 age demographic.
Fox News had 4.2 million total viewers and 744,000 in the 25-54 age demographic for Trump’s first town hall with the network since the 2016 presidential election. In contrast, MSNBC had 1.4 million total viewers and 239,000 in the 25-54 age demographic during the same time. CNN came in last, with 1 million total viewers and 251,000 in the 25-54 demo, according to Nielsen Media Research. [….]
When the town hall was aired again at 11:00 P.M.-12 A.M. ET, Fox News netted 2 million total viewers and 422,000 in A25-54, meaning the total viewership for the event was 6,137,000 total viewers and 1,166,000 in the A25-54 demo.
It beat Democratic town halls. By a lot.
The president’s town hall had more than 1.5 million more viewers than any of the Democratic primary candidates’ town halls on Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC.
The most-watched town hall for any of the 2020 Democrats also took place on Fox News: The event with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, which took place in April 2019, had nearly 2.6 million viewers.
Sounds bigly. And it sounds like Democrats may be in trouble come November.
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