During an MSNBC panel discussion on Donald Trump allowing himself to be influenced by far-right characters, which had a marked influence on his Tuesday night debate performance, contributor Ed Luce suggested the former president has quickly become his own worse enemy.Speaking with the hosts on "Morn...
Both things can be true.
…What we’ve found for the last 10 years or so now is that when it comes to Republican candidates, and especially Trump, reality no longer matters. At all. There are 743,000 things that should have disqualified him for president. That Republicans should have noped out on, said “this is definitely not our guy”. They just don’t matter. For a number of reasons.
His campaign could be literally a dog shitting on a US flag. And it wouldn’t change anything; he would still poll virtually the same. There are almost no actual “undecideds” leaning towards him.
At this point, it’s about voter motivation and access. His guys CAN be less motivated to vote, and Harris supporters can definitely be more motivated to vote. That’s where we are.
Thanks. And I was having such a great week.
Isn’t that true about all US elections? There are no “undecided” voters, just Dems and Reps and the result is always based on who can motivate their voters the most.
If that were true, then nobody would be worried about third-party voters. Off the top of my head, you might want to consider it 1992, 2000, and 2016.
(Of course motivating people is really important, too.)
Agreed, but I don’t know the mindset of those people and how to think of them. Do we just take them out of the voter pool? Are they potentially swing?
My take on 2016 was that the Dems were deeply unenthusiastic about Hillary - and who can blame them - so they didn’t show up to vote. On the other hand the Reps were stoked about Trump so they turned up at the polls.
Swing voters? I don’t get it. I cannot see any rational person sitting in the middle comparing Trump and Harris and picking Trump as a better presidential option. Irrational people? My gut tells me they they are probably sitting and the far ends of either camp.
My guess is that the people closer to the middle aren’t actually swing voters, but they are far more likely to have their enthusiasm to vote influenced than the true believers.
The big question, in my opinion, is how much - or how little - the polls reflect the enthusiasm to go out and vote. My impression is that Dem enthusiasm in high right now, while not so much for the Reps. It’s possible that a 50/50 poll may hide the fact that a big chunk of one of the 50% is much less likely to actually vote.
I’m Canadian, so I see the news but I don’t have day to day experience with US voters. Of course, neither do the 90% of Americans that don’t live in those swing states.
Many polls are of registered likely voters. So as you point out, that data alone is not particularly informative on this issue.
My question is how much “likely” translates to “voted”. It seems easy to respond, “Yes”, when asked on the phone, but requires a bit more enthusiasm to actually go stand in line and cast a vote.
Not all.
And it didn’t use to be. Well, as bad, anyway.
Also, democrats and Democrat-aligned seem to be more likely to consider other options, or to call out their leaders. Not always, and probably not even most of the time. But significantly more often.
Also, it goes in one direction. I know plenty of democrats who voted for a Republican president, but hardly any republicans that voted for a Democrat president.