"If There Is Another Tick Down, It's a Total Bloodbath":

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How Trump’s Self-Destructive Candidacy Could Blow Up the Electoral Map

Democrats’ massive fundraising, downballot energy, and seniors turning against Trump signal a potential blue-wave election with unexpected flips. As one South Carolina strategist says, “Biden supporters in red states are hopeful.”

By Peter Hamby
October 20, 2020

In 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign was gifted an election-night surprise on its way to 365 electoral votes: It won Indiana. The state hadn’t voted for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide, and just four years earlier, George W. Bush crushed John Kerry in Indiana by 21 points. But in the wake of the economic crash, Democrats were surfing a wave, and Obama eked out a narrow 28,391-vote win over John McCain in the Hoosier State. It was a holy-shit moment, both for the national media and Obama high command, neither of which had identified Indiana as a key battleground heading into Election Day. The win didn’t come out of nowhere, exactly: Obama had plowed resources into registering new voters there during his primary fight with Hillary Clinton; the polls were always close; and corners of Indiana shared media markets with the more competitive states of Michigan and Ohio. But the polling was also spotty, and McCain led by a final average of 1.4 points.

The Obama campaign looked to other states, like North Carolina and Virginia, to carve a new path to 270. When Indiana landed in its column, it was an unexpected treat, a crisp $20 bill found in its pocket. The state decisively tipped back to Republicans in a big way four years later. But there’s a lesson in that fluke Indiana win, too, as Democrats head into the final two weeks of an election in which Joe Biden continues to gain strength against a stalled-out Donald Trump: Even as the two campaigns and the political media focus their attention on certain core battleground states, weird things tend to happen at the margins in wave elections, outside the agreed-upon field of view. And 2020 is shaping up to be a wave of seismic proportions. As veteran election handicapper Stuart Rothenberg told me back in 2018, “The thing about wave elections is that they manifest themselves in places you didn’t think were competitive.”

A slew of political fundamentals—fundraising, explosive early-vote numbers, late-spending decisions, candidate travel, surging downballot Democrats, the Republican rush to confirm a new Supreme Court justice, and the ugly fact that Trump is dueling with George H. W. Bush for the title of most unpopular incumbent since World War II—point to what’s coming. If the polls are correct, the president is about to get schlonged, bigly. “Trump right now is just so vulnerable to a complete collapse,” said one respected Democratic number-cruncher working with a variety of outside groups. “He is so close to the edge in all of these states, if there is another tick down, it’s a total bloodbath.” Trump only narrowly won the 2016 race, within the margin of error in a handful of swing states. Since then the president’s support among his strongest demographics, including working-class white women, white men, and even white evangelicals, has deteriorated. Every election since 2017, every swing state poll and every fundraising quarter have favored Democrats, with independents and college-educated women rejecting Trump by powerful margins. Trump was already on thin ice. But if there’s a blue wave, it won’t just be because the coalition that powered Democrats in 2018 showed up again in a big way. It’s also that seniors have abandoned Trump for Biden during the coronavirus pandemic, a well-reported phenomenon but one that still seems curiously underplayed in the preelection narrative. By building a coalition of suburbanites, college-educated voters, and seniors—voters who actually vote— Biden isn’t just on the cusp of denying Trump a second term. He’s obliterating the voting base that’s undergirded the Republican Party for the last 30 years. “If you were going to concoct a Molotov cocktail to toss and blow apart a party’s key coalitions, right now the GOP is dealing with it,” said Ohio-based Republican consultant Nick Everhart.

Recent polls from CNN and NBC showed Biden with a more-than-20-point lead among voters over the age of 65. Democrats haven’t won that age group since the 2000 election, and seniors became a reliable voting bloc for Republicans during the Obama era. Trump won seniors by nine points over Clinton in 2016. Today Biden is winning seniors in the aging upper Midwest—Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—by healthy margins. In the Sunbelt states—Georgia, Texas, and Arizona—Trump is still winning the olds, but his edge has diminished since 2016. Biden, his fellow senior citizen, is chewing into Republican margins. In Florida, where the old vote is crucial, Trump defeated Clinton by 17 points among seniors last time. Today, thanks to COVID-19 and the president’s hapless response to it, Biden is either winning or tied with Trump among Florida seniors, depending on the poll.

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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/how-trumps-self-destructive-candidacy-could-blow-up-the-electoral-map

[lastlib]

1. I'm hoping for a historic beat-down for the ages.

[calimary]

6. Me, too!

Bigger than Johnson over Goldwater.

Or Reagan over Mondale.

Or Nixon over McGovern. And HOW, there! I think McGovern only won one state, and it wasn't even his own.

[ooky]

2. Well, he has been a bloodbath to our country. nt

[Maru Kitteh]

5. so true! nt

[flamingdem]

3. Hooray for seniors!

[C Moon]

4. If this election had fair elections...no Russian involvement, no burning of ballot boxes,

no tampering with voting machines, no fake ballot boxes...
The U.S. would be ALL blue.

[pfitz59]

7. I hope all the down ballot races are bloodbaths as well

Crush the life out the the GOP fuckwits once and for all.

[Volaris]

8. If they lose Texas in a general election, I'm not sure they can claim to be a national party anymore