OH-Quinnipiac: Biden +8, other match ups competitive

[pbrower2a]

Obviously this is ridiculously D-friendly, but there’s really not much evidence (if at all) to suggest that Ohio is less likely to flip than Iowa or that it will even vote to the right of Iowa (which it didn’t in 2016). Reading this forum you’d think OH was some titanium red R+15 state and IA still a pure Tossup/D+1 state. At least Democrats still have a lot of room for growth in urban/suburban Ohio (where Clinton underperformed badly, especially compared to other Midwestern states) even if the rural areas keep trending Republican. Of course they’re unlikely to win it back in 2020, but it’s easier to envision a Democratic/Biden path to victory here in a wave than in IA, where Democrats are extremely reliant on a decent showing in the rural parts of the state.

The media narrative is that the 2020 Presidential election will be close, as was 2016. After all, one expects the re-election bid of an incumbent President to have a result similar to the  election in which he was elected. Five states voted differently between 1992 and 1996; three states voted differently between 2000 and 2004; two states and one Congressional district voted differently in 2012 than in 2008. The states that shifted were close in the first election. Go back in time to the 1980s and you will find that five states swung (from Carter to Reagan) and to the 1950s (when five states switched sides in Eisenhower-vs-Stevenson elections).

The media have a vested interest in keeping politics look like a real contest, as if it were a sporting match. Yeah, sure, some football team is down 24-3 at the half, but if everything goes right there might still be an upset win for the underdog...  

Every Presidency has its problems, but the successful ones solve those problems gracefully and decisively; some, like that of George W Bush, ride a tide until the tide breaks. The catastrophic failures either bring on calamities or face calamities with a bungled response (Hoover) or face a changing electorate not to the President's favor.

I do not have a stake in media coverage. I am at most a hobbyist as an analysis of trends leading to the next election. I see a chaotic Presidency and demographic trends in the electorate, including electoral behavior of the new voters who supplant older voters dying off, and I see nothing but political inertia favoring President Trump. Political inertia favored Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama. If an incumbent President does not mess up badly, then if he is at all competent as a campaigner (Trump was adequately competent in 2016!), then he wins re-election.

It is my position that Trump will gain nothing that he lost in 2016, that he will do badly in enough medium-to-large states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) to lose them (and with them minimally the Presidential election of 2020). and that he has more of a chance of losing Arizona and Iowa than he has of winning them. Florida (as it usually is), Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio will be very close, as will be the wayward Congressional districts ME-02 and NE-02 which together comprise 80 electoral votes, and I cannot distinguish them. Of the four states in that list I can see Trump winning three, four, or none -- it looks that close to me. But the difference is between about 295 and 375 electoral votes. Texas is on the fringe of contest, and it straddles 400 electoral votes.

I see President Trump taking identity politics to its logical conclusion -- and finally its failure. The logical trend of any fad is its dissolution into irrelevance and rejection. Service to constituents used to matter greatly, and it can again; Donald Trump is the antithesis of service.    

[pbrower2a]

There will be House seats that could be won that Democrats did not win in 2018. If Trump is toxic, then a seat or two in Ohio might switch over from R to D.

[pbrower2a]

I think that this poll is probably more friendly towards Democrats than Ohio will ultimately be, but I do want to note that Trump's approval in Ohio in the midterms was likely not +7.  After the 2016 elections, FOX decided to switch to an enhanced version, called voter analysis.  It shows his midterm approval at -2 and his favorability at +2, which seems a little more likely to me.

1. Collapses of support happen, and polling can reflect those. Those collapses at first look like outliers. If the politician recovers quickly enough, then a 'bad' poll may simply be a reflection of a short-term situation that loses its relevance. OK, so the President said something offensive and people forget it after things cool off a bit. Then a split of approval at 40-55 (which if maintained indicates a nearly-sure defeat), down from a level of 46-50 (shaky but winnable), drifts back to perhaps 45-48 (again shaky but winnable).

2. Collapses would seem to indicate the peeling-away of potential support as constituencies go from acceptance to rejection. Such would appear in other states than the state polled. At roughly the same time I saw poor polling results for the President from such states as  Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Texas. A result in one state that does not appear in others might be an outlier -- but in several at roughly the same time, it might suggest at the least a widespread, temporary drop in support. Several polls suggesting much the same in the same state suggest permanence.

3. It is easy to deny an outlier. Do you remember the visceral contempt of liberals for Donald Trump in 2016? It is still there, and it may be more intense than ever, although it might not show  in polls. We do not see polls rating 'on a scale of 0 to 10'. Liberals generally did not see the Clinton collapse and Trump surge in 2016 until it appeared very late as seeming outliers. The seeming outliers were the reality. One can draw conclusions about electoral strategy and the effectiveness of a campaign in holding old rules in contempt -- but those rules exist for good reason.

4. Most politicians contemplate how they will govern once elected and have no fear of making fools of themselves in public office under the scrutiny of news media. Trump has broken that rule, and those who break the rules can be geniuses or fools depending on the validity of the rule. Shakespeare, Goya, Jefferson, Beethoven, Pasteur, and Einstein broke the rules of their time and got away with it. The lunatic and the inebriate say crazy things that prove upon quick judgment lacking in validity might be arrested and locked up for their own safety. I will spare us all an assessment of where Trump lies on the continuum between fool and genius.

5. It would seem that the 2016 election is of little relevance to current realities of support and rejection of Donald Trump. The April blizzard cannot preclude a heat wave in May.

[pbrower2a]

I know its hard to believe to GoPers and blue avatars that OH and IA, Trump overperformed in a can be won by Biden. Makes sense, since Reynolds and DeWine only won their races by 3.5 over inferior opponents than Biden

They cannot recognize a failed Presidency when it is obviously so. 

[pbrower2a]

I think that this poll is probably more friendly towards Democrats than Ohio will ultimately be, but I do want to note that Trump's approval in Ohio in the midterms was likely not +7.  After the 2016 elections, FOX decided to switch to an enhanced version, called voter analysis.  It shows his midterm approval at -2 and his favorability at +2, which seems a little more likely to me.

Net approval at -2 in Ohio suggests that Ohio will be very close with Trump against a reasonably competent Democrat. If Ohio is tied, then the Democrat is winning Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and probably Iowa as well...

Most of us are ignoring favorability unless it involves a non-swing state.

Ohio is somewhere between 295 and 375 electoral votes for the Democrat, so it is a must win for the Republican and the kill for a Democrat. At this point I cannot easily distinguish Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio, all big chunks of electoral vote that I see likely to vote together one way or the other.

If Ohio has gone from giving Trump an 8-point edge to being a tossup in the general election, then the Trump team has its work cut out for 2020.