Monday Morning Quarterbacking

I recognize that my friends and acquaintances who happen to be die-hard Trump supporters continue to embrace a belief that the election was stolen from their guy. The intent of this post is not to change their hearts and minds. I recognize that is impossible. Besides, everyone is entitled to their own belief system.

The purpose of this post is to briefly review the truthful reasons for Trump’s defeat in the last election as revealed by an autopsy conducted by his campaign’s internal polling people.

To be clear – this isn’t made-up fake news – this is the actual 27 page Exit Poll Analysis by Fabrizio, Lee and Associates and published by Politico. Hit the hyperlink for a redirect to the document – it is an easy read.

The report focuses on the ten battleground states that Trump won in 2016 but split in the 2020 election. The five states won by Biden in 2020 are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin while the five states held by Trump in 2020 include Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

There’s much to learn from the Autopsy but the key takeaways are among the following:

1. While Trump increased turnout in 2020 among GOP voters – receiving a record number of GOP votes – Trump lost independents.

2. Trump increased his support among Hispanics by a significant margin, broke even among Black voters but lost significant support among White Males across all states.

3. Support for Trump shrank among all age groups but was greatest among 65+ and 18-29 year-old groups. The greatest losses were among College-Educated White voters in all states.

4. New voters in 2020 supported Biden.

5. Both candidates were not perceived as particularly honest or trustworthy – nevertheless, Biden held a double digit advantage over Trump in flipped states.

6. Trump was perceived as mishandling Covid across the board – particularly in flipped sates.

7. Covid was the Number One issue for voters across the board but more so in flipped states. Biden won that support 3:1

8. The economy was the Number Two issue for voters across the board and Trump won that support 6:1

9. Three-fourths of voters across the board favored mask mandates.

10. 90 percent of voters said that Supreme Court appointments were a factor. Strangely, for those that said it was they supported Biden across the board. Those that said it wasn’t largely voted for Trump.

Conclusion:

Trump’s slow-walking of the pandemic and personal behavior (truthfulness) was a big deal – particularly for suburban voters. Spurn the Big Fat Middle of the electorate at your own peril. Politicizing the virus, wishful thinking and ridiculing masking was a strategic blunder. Same for obsessing over the stock market.  

Trump had at his fingertips the virtually limitless resources of the federal government, its agencies and its scientists.  Trump failed to seize the moment like George Bush did when he mounted the still smoking ruins of the 9/11 attack with a megaphone. 

In my own opinion, if Trump would have seized on the notion that China ‘did us bad’, focused on early detection and contact tracing of the virus, set an early and consistent example in common sense public health measure (social distancing, hand washing and masking) and ceased conflating the economy with the stock market he would have won the election. Maybe by a landslide.