Let's Play a Game: Tell me why you think Trump is favored in November WITHOUT using polls

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

I still maintain that Trump is a narrow underdog in 2024, but it's absurd to obsess over fundamentals and incumbency (the ringing endorsement of a fraction of a percentage historical result....) when few at the margins are swinging their vote based on performance, and most will be decided by people actually showing up or not. And it is clear that one candidate has more passionate supporters while slowly shedding the intensity of casual disapprovers. The most important thing to normies is the fact that Trump is no longer on Twitter so they don't have to be oversaturated with his every thought in every waking moment.

So your argument is that people want Trump back because they miss the pre-covid times, even though Trump was president in 2020 when covid hit, a crisis that he mishandled so badly that it partly led to him losing re-election. Do I have that right?

That's like saying Hoover would be favored over FDR in the 1936 election because Americans miss the good old days before The Great Depression hit.

As this poster already stated, this is viewed as an event outside of Trump's control - closer to 9/11 than the depression (although neither is a useful comparison). Every nation in the world was impacted by an event outside of our borders.

Trump narrowly lost re-election not because of a singular event but because he was a massively polarizing figure at the time that people at the margins just wanted out of the news. Now that people are not locked in the home with their television on all day, the record turnouts of 2020 should decline to include only the most fanatical and fewer of the 'disapprove of both' contingent that were desperately looking to restore normalcy to their lives.

We were told after 2016 than Trump likely could not expand beyond is 63 million hardcore supporters and then he suddenly won 10 million more as he came to represent the entire American Right that previously voiced concerns about him. A Trump upset could involve keeping that coalition together as much as possible while Biden votes dwindle due to youth apathy. No shift in minorities required - although polling indicates that even that may be possible.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

I am dissatisfied with the responses I've gotten so far. Too much of what you guys think people are feeling, and not enough hard facts and real-world indicators. "Joe Biden is old" is not a serious argument.

You are asking people to disregard data and tell a narrative and then complaining about a lack of data. Disregarding low turnout special elections, why is Joe Biden so obviously favored? Every presidential election of my adult life has felt like an inevitable Democratic coronation except this one because of general discontent.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

I am dissatisfied with the responses I've gotten so far. Too much of what you guys think people are feeling, and not enough hard facts and real-world indicators. "Joe Biden is old" is not a serious argument.

You are asking people to disregard data and tell a narrative and then complaining about a lack of data. Disregarding low turnout special elections, why is Joe Biden so obviously favored? Every presidential election of my adult life has felt like an inevitable Democratic coronation except this one because of general discontent.

So election results don't count because of "low turnout", but polls are infallible?

Nearly every pro-Trump argument I see falls apart after just the slightest bit of critical thinking. People keep hand-waving actual election results like they don't mean anything when they are telling us EVERYTHING.

Apparently, the economy and the border has been so terrible under Biden that voters will crawl over broken glass to vote fking Donald Trump back into office. There's just one problem I have with this argument. Joe Biden is a DEMOCRAT.

Voters don't know a lot. But they DO know that Biden is a Democrat and Trump is a Republican. If inflation and "open borders" were of such high concern to voters that it would turn them ultra-MAGA, they certainly would not vote for MORE DEMOCRATS to continue carrying out Joe Biden's policies... and yet that's exactly what's been happening since 2022. You can do whatever mental gymnastics you want, but that is reality and fact.

Like it's insane to see people saying Arizona is going to vote for Trump when this traditionally GOP state voted for Katie Hobbs! when inflation was at like 7%, gas prices were at record-highs and migrants were "invading" the state.

And you want me to believe Trump has some magical powers that will guide him to a win in this state that he LOST in the last election, while he's scraping for cash and undergoing criminal trials in several jurisdictions. Give me a break  

I've already said that Biden is favored, I'm just throwing your same absurd argument back at you (use data but not that data). When have special election results been predictive? Especially without Trump on the ballot who has fanatics who will vote for him and only him. I certainly haven't found any candidate who inspires me to go to the polls in recent years.

The respected (non-junk) polling industry has been incredible accurate and I have very few reasons to think anything has changed from 2018-2022 polling. Those arguments are less convincing. I think Biden is favored because polling will change, not because it is wrong.

But it's almost a coin flip. Many Americans only think about politics when a presidential election is on the ballot. They will go to the polls every 4 years and do their civic duty and not remember a thing about midterm Senate races. No Trump devotee or copycat has come close to copying his appeal, so it's no surprise some people feel no need to vote between two nobodies - like I didn't in Pennsylvania 2022.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Regarding high housing prices, President Biden should simply point to Wall Street as the fall guy for puchasing starter homes and pricing ordinary people out of the market, and by extension the Republican Party which has traditionally been an ally of Wall Street, and run on presenting policies that would counter that.  That would make sense to most Amercans. The truth is probably more complicated than that, but I would rather let Repubicans do the explaining, because once you're explaining, you're losing.  

I haven't heard Democrats blame Wall Street in a decade because banking has been a strong fundraising ally of the Democratic establishment since the 90s and post-Romney stands completely against the Republican Party. Further, there is essentially zero logical connection between Wall Street and housing, except a conspiracy theory about BlackRock that quickly vanished because of how nonsensical it is.

The older homeowner class is where the Democrats are cleaning up anyway - sure some are upset and would like to move but  cannot due to interest rates - but most are very happy with their asset values.

The youth of today lack the same historical connotation and clearly blame the government/developers (and more importantly incumbent homeowners) for supply or the government for interest rates. Hard to win both sides of a generational warfare feud.