Mainstream media have been trumpeting a lot of the polls being for Joe Biden.
We’ve pointed out the problems of some of those polls and how there are the other polls, like the Democracy Institute poll, that find President Donald Trump ahead because they’re measuring likely voters not registered voters and they aren’t oversampling Democrats. Most are also not measuring things like the shy Trump voter or that the youth vote is again unlikely to come out in greater numbers.
But what’s missing in a lot of the discourse is that the measures apart from MSM national polls by which you judge whether a president will be reelected are all for Trump.
First there’s no indication of a youth voter surge, that’s bad for the Democrats who poll much higher with the young than other age groups.
As I already wrote about, Trump has a 51% approval rating from Zogby.
Zogby Analytics:
Trump Approval at 51%
(poll released on Oct 9; 833 likely voters; conducted 9/25-27) pic.twitter.com/cvTLFBlvH3
— PollWatch (@PollWatch2020) October 9, 2020
Gallup has found whenever the incumbent has over 50%, he’s reelected.
Gallup also found that 56% Americans thought they were better off now than four years ago under Barack Obama and Joe Biden. A reporter asked Joe Biden about that, he got snippy and said that if people thought that they didn’t have to vote for him and that their memories were somehow wrong.
The important thing to note? How high that number is for Trump and that all the prior president in 2012, 2004, 1992, 1984 who even had lower numbers were reelected.
% of Americans who say they are better off now than they were 4 years ago
Sept 2020: 56 percent
Dec 2012: 45 percent
Oct 2004: 47 percent
Oct 1992: 38 percent
July 1984: 44 percenthttps://t.co/CmUJ6rOG3E pic.twitter.com/LadV3G1GdI
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) October 8, 2020
David Chapman did a great Twitter thread of some of the other historical measures.
From Townhall:
“[N]o incumbent who has received at least 75% of the primary vote has lost re-election. Donald Trump received 94% of the primary vote, which is the 4th highest all-time. Higher than Eisenhower, Nixon, Clinton, and Obama.”
Oh, and it gets better.
“Three times in history America has faced a pandemic, recession, and civil unrest during an election year. The incumbent party is 3-0 in those elections,”
This tallies with the Helmut Norpoth prediction model that cites the importance of the primary numbers and also predicts a Trump win. People came out in droves for Trump in the primary when they didn’t even have to.
Want more? There’s more.
Every candidate who has led in voter enthusiasm since 1988 has won. Trump not only leads in voter enthusiasm, he leads by a lot, a 19 point enthusiasm gap.
Thread on my election prediction:
My prediction is based solely on history and historical trends.
The biggest issue in the campaign is Covid-19.
There has been 11 Incumbents to face a pandemic during re-election. The incumbent is 11-0 (1820-present).— David Chapman (@davidchapman141) October 11, 2020
since the first primary in 1912, 7 incumbents have faced a bad economy during re-election. 5 of those incumbents had very poor primary performances and lost. 2 of them had strong primary performances and won re-election.
— David Chapman (@davidchapman141) October 11, 2020
In fact, no incumbent who has received at least 75% of the primary vote has lost re-election. Donald Trump received 94% of the primary vote, which is the 4th highest all-time. Higher than Eisenhower, Nixon, Clinton, and Obama.
— David Chapman (@davidchapman141) October 11, 2020
Trump is only 1 of 5 incumbents since 1912 to receive 90% or more of the primary vote.
We’ve never seen primary participation levels for an incumbent like we did in the 2020 GOP primary. Trump set a record for most votes received by an incumbent with 18.1M.
— David Chapman (@davidchapman141) October 11, 2020
than the voter intention question that has Biden leading.
Since 2004, the candidate that led in google searches has won the election. Trump leads Biden in google searches by a ratio of 3 to 1.
On Polls
The larger the class divide in the electorate, the larger the polling error— David Chapman (@davidchapman141) October 11, 2020
Here’s another interesting measure Chapman observes, that no one who has ever served more than 15 years in the Senate has won. Joe was there for almost 40 years.
The 14 year rule – No one gets elected president who needs longer than 14 years to get from his or her first gubernatorial or Senate victory to either the presidency or the vice presidency. Biden needed 36 years to become VP.
History is against Biden and in favor of Trump.
— David Chapman (@davidchapman141) October 11, 2020
So we’ll see soon, but a whole lot of history would have to go south for all these measures to fail. That’s looking pretty good for Trump.
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