By Matthew Continetti
Saturday, November 02, 2019
At first glance, President Trump’s reelection chances
don’t look good. Stories about impeachment and presidential misbehavior
dominate the news. Trump’s disapproval rating is high. Independent voters are
against him. GOP congressmen are retiring from suburban districts that trend
Democratic. The generic ballot is about where it was last cycle. Trump’s win in
2016, when some 78,000 voters in three states gave him the Electoral College,
was a close-run thing. Seems hard to repeat.
And yet liberals are filled with apprehension. They are
coming to recognize the potential size of the president’s pool of supporters.
They fret over the capacities and liabilities of the eventual Democratic
nominee. And their concerns are related: Trump’s ability to recapitulate or
expand his winning coalition depends in large part on the identity of his
opponent. Given these uncertainties, it would be foolish to predict Trump’s
fate. He might even be stronger than he appears.
“Despite demographic trends that continue to favor the
Democrats, and despite Trump’s unpopularity among wide swathes of the
electorate, it will still be difficult for the Democrats to prevail against an
incumbent president who has presided over a growing, low-unemployment economy
and retains strong loyalty among key sectors of the electorate,” write Ruy Teixeira
and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress. No conservatives they.
The Democratic difficulty has a name: the Electoral
College. Twice in the 21st century, the level of the presidential vote has
mattered less than its distribution. Trump’s people are spread much more evenly
across the country than his opponents are. His base of white voters without
college degrees, say Teixeira and Halpin, “make up more than half of all
eligible voters in critical Electoral College states he won in 2016—including
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—and in key target states for 2020 such as
New Hampshire.”
Non-college white voters comprised the largest part of
the electorate in 2016. Trump won them 63 percent to 31 percent. That margin
more than compensated for his seven-point loss among whites with college
degrees. Teixeira and Halpin predict that the number of white voters without
college degrees will drop next year. But they also recognize that Trump can
still win. “If he increased his support across states among these voters by 10
margin points, he would in fact carry the popular vote, albeit by just 1
percentage point.”
White voters without college degrees are the reserve army
of the GOP. They are a falling percentage of the U.S. population but a rising
percentage of the Republican party. Recently the Wall Street Journal observed that the same number of voters
identify as Republican today as in 2012. It is the composition of the party
that has changed. In 2010, half of Republicans were white voters without
bachelor’s degrees. Today 59 percent are. In 2010, 40 percent of Republicans
were white voters with bachelors. That number has fallen to under 30 percent.
The movement of whites without college degrees into the
GOP is decades old. But the trend accelerated during the Obama years. Why?
During his presidency, especially his second term, the regional, religious, and
cultural differences between whites of varying educational attainment became
more acute.
The Republican party of 2019 is more rural, more
un-credentialed, and more supportive of government intervention in the economy
than it was before. And it backs President Trump. His approval among
Republicans in the Journal/NBC News
poll is 84 percent. None of his erstwhile primary challengers earn more than 2
percent support.
The voters who put Trump over the top have not abandoned
him. “Some 62 percent of voters approve of Mr. Trump’s job performance in the
450 counties in which Mr. Trump outperformed 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt
Romney by 20 points or more,” according to the Journal. “That is up from a job approval rating of 43 percent in
those counties during Mr. Trump’s first year in office.” It is also 17 points
greater than his overall job approval rating in last month’s Journal/NBC News poll. If Trump’s
demeanor and brand of national populism has repelled the educated professionals
who inhabit America’s economic, political, and cultural institutions, it has
failed to drive away his core supporters. It may even attract them.
“Democrats clearly need a strategy that both mobilizes
the strong and growing anti-Trump Democratic base and reaches out to voters the
party lost to Trump in 2016,” conclude Teixeira and Halpin. “Democrats don’t
need all of these voters but rather just enough of them—particularly white
non-college women—to halt the erosion and cut their margins to levels where
relatively strong base turnout and new support from white college graduates can
offset Trump’s advantages in the most important battleground states.”
Which is why the identity of the Democratic nominee
matters. A study by the Public Religion Research Institute in coordination with
Brookings found that one third of Americans say their vote will depend on the
winner of the Democratic primary. These uncommitted voters identify as moderate
and politically independent. They don’t like Trump, but may wind up in his
column if the Democratic nominee strikes them as immoderate. A Democratic
nominee whose agenda is out of step with the public would be exactly what Trump
needs to increase his support among his base and reclaim lost ground among
independents and white voters with college degrees.
As I write, Elizabeth Warren leads in both Iowa and New
Hampshire.
Now you know why Democrats are worried.
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