Forget the names Joe Biden and Donald Trump for a moment.
Imagine that you are less than three weeks away from election day, when the incumbent President will run for a second term. In the primary election, the incumbent president won 94 percent of his party’s votes, while the challenger won only 52 percent of his party’s votes. The difference in enthusiasm largely favors the incumbent. There were no novel foreign wars or major military actions during the incumbent president’s first term.
In polls on which candidate would be better to lead the economy, the incumbent consistently has the advantage. The Dow Jones Industrial Index is up 57% since Election Day four years ago. When asked, 56 percent of respondents said they were better off now than they were four years ago, the highest percentage ever to answer yes in an election year for an incumbent president in the history of the poll.
Voter registration numbers in key swing states favor the incumbent’s party, in some cases significantly. Moreover, 56 percent of Americans believe the incumbent will win the election.
Knowing all this information, who would you say is leading the race? The obvious answer would be the incumbent.
These are the exact facts we have right now, and yet polls consistently show that challenger Joe Biden not only has the lead, but has the lead in what would be the biggest presidential victory since Ronald Reagan won 49 states in 1984. Would a candidate who really is, on the way to this kind of victory, did he spend time campaigning in a state like Nevada, which his party won four years ago?
If you ask people what’s going well for Joe Biden right now, they’d say he’s leading in the polls. But what else?
Is there a difference in enthusiasm in his favor or is he a crowd pleaser? NO. In some cases, Joe Biden’s petite crowds are filled with as many Trump supporters as Biden supporters. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to attract thousands. Even in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, when people are allowed to stay home, they are still choosing to take a calculated risk to see President Trump in person.
Is Biden a teenage, active and charismatic candidate? Is he a rousing speaker with compelling speeches? Does it promote change or a national movement? Is not. How about implementing a huge, bold program? He doesn’t even answer basic questions, let alone implement his bold plan.
Is the Republican Party in shambles, or does it hate its candidate? Despite what the Lincoln Project and the talking-head panels on CNN and MSNBC would have you believe, President Trump currently enjoys approval ratings of over 90% in the Republican Party.
The person who could actually answer yes to all of these questions was Barack Obama. He was teenage, active and invigorating. He drew huge crowds and campaigned to make history and bring real change to our country. His posters contained uplifting, positive messages of “change” and “believe”, and his slogan was “yes we can”. Even then, President Obama’s victory was smaller than Joe Biden’s current national advantage.
Are we really supposed to believe these polls are correct? Or maybe we should believe our own eyes? We are seeing energy around President Trump again, just as we did in 2016. We are seeing all of this data and other factors that should indicate that President Trump will maintain the mighty position necessary to win re-election or at least find himself in a competitive race. At least they don’t indicate that a sitting president has been bludgeoned in an outbreak the likes of which we haven’t seen in nearly forty years.
These pollsters expect us to believe that a presidential candidate who has spent months in the basement and can’t get through the day without making another gaffe wins in a landslide? Just this week, when Biden was asked why the 56 percent of voters surveyed who believed he was better off today than four years ago should vote for him, Biden replied that they should not vote for him.
Joe Biden is openly telling reporters that Americans don’t deserve to know his position on key issues until after the election. We have someone who says the silent part out deafening. Then again, he probably doesn’t realize that he’s no longer unthreatening in his basement when they let him out to talk.
The reality is that there is a direct contradiction between survey results and virtually all other information available, including eye testing. In 2016, President Trump outperformed the polls, with significant leads in some states. In Ohio, for example, President Trump outperformed the RCP average on Election Day by almost 10 points.
Pundits and pollsters could potentially see the president reelected for another four years on Election Day. They will say it is a shock and that no one expected it. But was it really a shock? Given all the non-poll information we know today, would President Trump winning in a few low weeks really be as much of a surprise as recent polls would show?
Ultimately, none of us can be sure who will win, but if we just watch our eyes, it will become clear that this race is not over yet and in Joe Biden’s favor, as the pollsters and pundits tell us.
Evan Berryhill is an attorney and political strategist at GOPAC. He previously worked as a communications officer on Capitol Hill. You can follow him on Twitter @EvBerryhill.
