November 1, 2020: Trump Won't Win the Popular Vote

 

November 1, 2020: With only two days left until Election Day, the blogger must admit he has been poring over polling data for weeks. As a result, he’s drinking more and still not sure what to expect.

This guy is going to win the popular vote.

 

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Trump won’t win the popular vote.

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I have argued repeatedly that the polls, in aggregate, have rarely been wrong. Whenever I point this out, Trump fans respond with fury, and insist, because I believe in evidence, that I must be a commie.

 

So, let me start with one surefire prediction and offer a bet I’d be happy to take from any unwitting Trump fan. The Orange God can’t win the popular vote unless Joe Biden commits a “gaffe,” such as admitting that he really is a satanic pedophile, as the poor souls who follow “Q” insist.

 

As I mentioned recently, members of the Trump cult will believe virtually anything at this point. (See: 10/29/20.)

 

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PUTTING FAITH in old-fashioned arithmetic, rather than conspiracy theories involving liberals who cannibalize babies, let’s turn to history for guidance. I was unable to find RealClear Politics (RCP) averages from 2000, except in a single line, on a 2004 chart. But that website, which combines all kinds of polls, had George W. Bush favored, barely, to win the presidency, two decades ago.

 

Four years later, the final polling averages at RCP had President Bush leading Sen. John Kerry.

 

In 2008, averages showed Mr. Obama with a comfortable lead. When he stood for a second term in 2012, the race was expected to be close, with the incumbent winning a second term.

 

 

“It took guts for Director Comey to make the move.”

 

In 2016 most experts thought Mrs. Clinton would win. We need to remember, however, how close the final polls were.

 

We also need to remember that ten days before the election, F.B.I. Director James Comey revealed that Hillary was still the subject of an investigation regarding her use of a private email server and thousands of missing emails.

 

Trump spent those last ten days battering the front runner, saying, “it took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. You know that. It took a lot of guts.”

 

He said he hoped Comey would “hang tough.”

 

“A lot of people want him to do the wrong thing,” Trump suggested. “What he did was the right thing.”

 

Later, Trump would insist that Comey had been working to blow up his campaign from the very start.

 

(Did I mention: Trump supporters will believe anything?)

 

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AS FOR ME, I am a fan of verifiable facts. For example, was the Russian investigation a “witch hunt?”

 

Opinion.

 

Did all the members of Team Trump listed below eventually admit meeting with Russians during the 2016 campaign? They did.

 

Fact:

 

Michael Cohen

Gen. Michael T. Flynn

Rick Gates

Jared Kushner

Paul Manafort

George Nader

Carter Page

W. Samuel Patten

George Papadopoulos

Felix Sater

Roger Stone

Donald Trump Jr.

Alexander van der Zwaan

 

(Names in bold indicate persons convicted of at least one felony.)

 

We should also add the name of one man who helped Stone arrange to meet with a Russian, and then lied to Congress and said he didn’t:

 

Michael Caputo

 

Caputo avoided a felony charge at the last minute, by amending his testimony to Congress and claiming he forgot about helping Stone. (See: 10/31/20 for an update on his recent activities.)

 

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AS I WAS SAYING, I’m a believer in facts. For that reason, I checked the polls as far back as the 2000 election. Here’s what I found. In the first column below we see who had the lead in the final average of polls. The second column is the actual margin of victory. The third shows the difference between prediction and the actual vote.

 

 

Final Presidential Polling Averages (2000-2020)

 

            Lead in the final polls                 Real margin             Difference

 

Bush                +0.6                                       0.5                          1.1**

Bush                +1.5                                       2.4                          0.9

Obama            +7.3                                       7.6                          0.3

Obama            +0.7                                       3.9                          3.2

Clinton           +3.2                                       2.1                           1.1

 

Biden (with one day left):  +6.7.                                                                                                                

In the five presidential contests, previous to 2020, the national polling averages have never been off by more than 3.2 points.

 

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STILL HAUNTED by the ghosts of 2016, I checked to see how accurate midterm election polling has been. RCP reports on what is called the “generic ballot.” That is, which party do voters prefer to control the next Congress?

 

 

Midterm Election Polls

 

                                         Average lead               Final result     Difference

 

2002    Republicans                +1.7                       +4.6                 +2.9

2006    Democrats                +11.5                       +7.9                 –3.6

2010    Republicans                +9.4                       +6.8                 –2.6

2014    Republicans                +2.4                       +5.7                +3.3

2018    Democrats                  +7.3                       +8.4                +1.1

2020    Democrats                  +6.8

 

 

In the last five midterms, the party leading in polling on the generic ballot went on to pile up more votes when people cast actual ballots. Again, the biggest margin of error was 3.6 points.

 

(We might note that in 2018, President Trump insisted a “red wave” was coming. When the waters receded, Democrats had outpolled Republicans by 8.8 million votes, largest midterm margin ever recorded.)