Trump pollster's campaign autopsy paints damning picture of defeat

[brooklynite]

Politico

Former President Donald Trump has blamed the election results on unfounded claims of fraud and malfeasance. But at the top levels of his campaign, a detailed autopsy report that circulated among his political aides paints a far different — and more critical — portrait of what led to his defeat.

The post-mortem, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, says the former president suffered from voter perception that he wasn’t honest or trustworthy and that he was crushed by disapproval of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. And while Trump spread baseless accusations of ballot-stuffing in heavily Black cities, the report notes that he was done in by hemorrhaging support from white voters.

The 27-page report, which was written by Trump chief pollster Tony Fabrizio, shows how Trump advisers were privately reckoning with his loss even as the former president and many of his supporters engaged in a conspiracy theory-fueled effort to overturn the election. The autopsy was completed in December 2020 and distributed to Trump’s top political advisers just before President Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

It is unclear if Trump has seen the report.

[bearsfootball516]

1. He didn't even have to do *well* with handling COVID, he just had to make an EFFORT.

And he probably would have cruised to victory.

His handling of COVID was such a huge deficit for him, even the appearance of giving a shit would have probably dragged him across the finish line.

[moonscape]

3. I dunno about 'cruised' - Boden still would have

won the popular vore, but yeah, he would have won AZ, GA and MI by the small numbers he needed. Terrifying.

[Johnny2X2X]

9. Biden was winning no matter what IMO

Biden ran a great campaign, he made the campaign about Covid-19, Joe dictated those terms. If Trump would have justr been hands off and let the experts handle the virus, Joe would have made the campaign about Trump's hundreds of other failures.

Character matters, the race was about character.

[unblock]

6. And he could still have done it in a horrible, bigoted way

Instead of taking the evil position that not wearing a mask is freedom and wearing a mask is oppression, he could have said that *not* wearing a mask is terrorism and we'll bomb any Middle East nation that sends maskless foreigners to America, and then sell trump-branded masks online.

Completely consistent with his usual evil and yet he would have won with that.

[Rorey]

8. Had he only advocated mask-wearing

I agree. Even if he had just advocated mask-wearing, he probably would have squeaked out a win. The finding that 75% of voters favored a mask mandate is very telling.

I think that finding out that *he knew* about COVID-19, along with what he knew about it, was also a big factor.

At the end of the day, his stupidity, selfishness, and stubbornness shown through.

[panfluteman]

26. Exactly! The American People Are Remarkably Forgiving - And Remarkably Stupid As Well.

All this treason, sedition and destroying our democracy stuff is way over their heads. And their memory span is also incredibly short - they have already long forgotten the many promises made and promises broken by Trump.

[catbyte]

2. "It is unclear if Trump has seen the report."

LOL. It's a sure bet he hasn't unless it consisted of nothing but bullet points and pictures.

[PJMcK]

4. That line jumped out at me, too

Trump doesn't read.

He certainly doesn't read anything that contradicts him!

Damn, I'm glad he's no longer president.

[yonder]

13. And if he did see it, read it and could understand it, we know the next verse - "Fake News"...

...no matter who underwrote the report

[gratuitous]

23. It's also a sure bet Trump hasn't read the report if he isn't the hero of every paragraph

Going over the ashes of the failed campaign doesn't interest Trump.

[PA Democrat]

5. Stop the Steal wackos need to see this.

[MyMission]

7. "Let the voters decide"

And we did.

How about distributing that report to the gqp. Some of them might read it and convey a summary to 45. Not that it would make any difference.

[samsingh]

10. i'm very troubled with the Hispanic shift to Trump

and this despite his attack on South American citizens.

[Cozmo]

15. Same here. What's up with that?

[Lonestarblue]

24. Trump increased his support from Hispanics here in Texas.

I was surprised, but then Biden did not visit Texas, and there wasn’t much Democratic outreach to the Hispanic communities. I believe it’s dangerous to assume that Hispanics must favor immigration. Many Texas Hispanics have been here for decades, and indeed some of their families date back to the time when Texas was owned by Mexico. They became US citizens when the US purchased the state, as well as other territories, from Mexico.

Another reason could well be the asylum seekers, and some Hispanics likely favored Trump’s efforts to kick them all out. Texas gets a large number of the people wanting to seek asylum here. Before Trump started forcing them back into Mexico, thousands were in areas near the border. Those areas already are among the poorest in the state, and suddenly some local resources, such as Catholic churches and various support services for the poor, were going to the migrants who were waiting for their day in court.

If these new migrants were allowed to stay, they would also be competing with natives for jobs. And, possibly, natives believed that some of the migrants would be brining the gang violence from their home countries with them.

The Rio Grande Valley is home to many Hispanics, and Trump was able to flip one county red in 2020. It’s also home to ranchers and oil workers. The oil industry has been hurting because of low crude prices and oversupply, so Biden’s focus on alternative energy and addressing the climate crisis would have sent them to Trump. Here’s an NPR article with a bit more information. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/05/931836590/how-texas-longtime-democratic-and-heavily-latino-county-flipped-red

If Democrats ever hope to turn Texas blue, they cannot take the Hispanic communities for granted. Democratic candidates will need policies that address their needs. The pandemic has hit these communities very hard, and many people in Texas lack health insurance. That and sensible immigration policies could be winning points for Democrats.

[bucolic_frolic]

11. What frightens me is all his fascist policies that were ho-hum to the public

like pollution, erosion of civil rights, racism, tax cuts for the rich, and Russian kowtowing.

Each in itself is a ten alarmer. Yet the voting public, or at least the non-Democratic part, is so ignorant these policies don't register.

[PatrickforO]

12. Well, yeah. Plus he conned many Cuban voters into supporting him by ginning up fear

of socialism.

[Teddy Beer]

14. No Shit!

[SayItLoud]

16. The more the rePUKES currently in office see this report the better. NT

[Larissa]

17. Post-mortem narrative of Trump Campaign

It's a reality smack which, no doubt, Trump won't read.


By ALEX ISENSTADT

02/01/2021 08:46 PM EST

Former President Donald Trump has blamed the election results on unfounded claims of fraud and malfeasance. But at the top levels of his campaign, a detailed autopsy report that circulated among his political aides paints a far different — and more critical — portrait of what led to his defeat.

The post-mortem, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, says the former president suffered from voter perception that he wasn’t honest or trustworthy and that he was crushed by disapproval of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. And while Trump spread baseless accusations of ballot-stuffing in heavily Black cities, the report notes that he was done in by hemorrhaging support from white voters.

The 27-page report, which was written by Trump chief pollster Tony Fabrizio, shows how Trump advisers were privately reckoning with his loss even as the former president and many of his supporters engaged in a conspiracy theory-fueled effort to overturn the election. The autopsy was completed in December 2020 and distributed to Trump’s top political advisers just before President Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

It is unclear if Trump has seen the report.

The findings are based on an analysis of exit polling in 10 states. Five of them — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — are states that Trump lost after winning them in 2016. The other five — Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — are states that Trump won in both elections.

The report zeroes in on an array of demographics where Trump suffered decisive reversals in 2020, including among white seniors, the same group that helped to propel him to the White House. The autopsy says that Trump saw the “greatest erosion with white voters, particularly white men,” and that he “lost ground with almost every age group.” In the five states that flipped to Biden, Trump’s biggest drop-off was among voters aged 18-29 and 65 and older.

Suburbanites — who bolted from Trump after 2016 — also played a major role. The report says that the former president suffered a “double-digit erosion” with “White College educated voters across the board.”

The picture of the election presented in the report is widely shared by political professionals in both parties, if not by Trump and his legions of his supporters. Trump never offered a concession to Biden, and up until his final days in office, he clung to the debunked idea that the election had been stolen.

Fabrizio declined to comment on the post-mortem. A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s personal behavior, the autopsy makes clear, contributed to his defeat. “Biden had a clear edge over POTUS on being seen as honest & trustworthy,” Fabrizio writes.

Trump’s response to the pandemic was also critical. The autopsy says that coronavirus registered as the top issue among voters, and that Biden won those voters by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. A majority registered disapproval of Trump’s handling of the virus.

Most voters said they prioritized battling the coronavirus over reopening the economy, even as the president put a firm emphasis on the latter. And roughly 75 percent of voters — most of whom favored Biden — said they favored public mask-wearing mandates.

The report also indirectly raises questions about the reelection campaign’s decision to pause advertising on TV over the summer and save resources until the fall. According to the findings, nearly 9-in-10 voters had made up their minds about whom to support by the final month of the race.

Fabrizio isn’t the only Trump adviser who has presented a post-mortem since Nov. 3. John McLaughlin, another Trump pollster, published a report on the conservative Newsmax website the week after the election.

Meanwhile, advisers to former Vice President Mike Pence brought in multiple pollsters to brief him on their conclusions after the election, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Among the takeaways was that Trump was gaining during the final weeks of the race and that his rallies had helped propel Republicans running in House and Senate races. But the pollsters also made clear that while there was substantial support for Trump’s policies, there was widespread exhaustion with the president.

Within Trump’s inner circle, Fabrizio had long espoused the belief that Trump needed to prioritize the pandemic in order to win reelection. Last summer, he penned a 79-page memo arguing that Trump needed to focus first on dealing with the pandemic rather than reopening the economy and recommending, among other things, that he should have been encouraging people to wear masks rather than mocking the practice.

[Sancho]

18. The Harris image vs Pence is simply gender and race...

...much of the country is still horrible biased.

[GreenEyedLefty]

20. I would say more gender than race

As a woman I have become much more acutely aware of society's hatred of strong, outspoken women.

[GreenEyedLefty]

19. Interesting to me the favorable/unfavorable with regard to Kamala Harris

Why on earth would she be viewed so unfavorably?

[ancianita]

21. Telling the truth to themselves & not Americans is the foundation of a bad, bad political party.

This was an out-and-out leak. That's all. That's how they tell the truth. It leaks.

They are not fit to govern any Americans who want fully informed consent.

[MrScorpio]

22. The mere fact that Trump STILL got over 70 million votes is disheartening

Seriously, what kind of severely damaged person would look at Trump, with all of his lies, malfeasance and incompetence, not to mention all the COVID deaths on his watch and the economic disaster in his wake, and believes that he should get a second term?

Why are there so many of these people walking around?

[rocktivity]

28. Though Trump got 11 million votes more in 2020 than he did in 2016

Last edited Tue Sep 12, 2023, 11:53 AM - Edit history (20)

the landslide majority of them came from the 26 million people who were either too young or too apathetic to vote Democrat or Republican in 2016. Biden won because he got the other 15 million -- a four million vote excess. Add those four million votes to the three million votes that contributed to Trump's popular vote margin of defeat in 2016 (how likely is it that the "landslide majority" of THEM changed their minds about him?), and you get Biden's seven million vote margin of victory.

You can also inform your disheartened heart that in addition to losing the popular vote TWICE in a row, Trump's 2020 popular vote margin of defeat was TWICE what it had been in 2016.


rocktivity

[rocktivity]

25. "Voters who did not vote in 2016 but voted in 2020

Last edited Sun Aug 28, 2022, 03:05 PM - Edit history (7)

accounted for roughly 1 in 6 voters, and they broke markedly for Biden, especially in the 'Flipped' states. 1 in 10 voters say they decided their vote in the final month of the campaign, and contrary to conventional wisdom, they broke in Biden’s favor..."

1 in 6 averages out to nearly 17 per cent. In 2016, 129 million people voted Democrat or Republican; in 2020, 155 million people did. That's an increase of 26 million, which averages out to -- WAIT FOR IT!!! -- nearly seventeen per cent more!

I love the smell of vindication in the morning.


rocktivity

[progree]

27. A vote flip of just 22,000 votes from Biden to Trump in 3 states (AZ, GA, WI) combined

and he would have tied the electoral college 269-269. In which case the election would have gone to the House. And because the Republicans control more delegations than the Democrats, and each state gets one vote, Trump would have won.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election accessed 2/2/21
State (Electoral Votes) Biden's victory margin
Arizona (11) 10,457 (0.31%)
Georgia (16) 11,779 (0.24%)
Wisconsin (10) 20,608 (0.63%)

Biden margin of victory: 10457+11,779+20608 = 42,844

Just shows how despite a huge 7.06 million popular vote win, and running against an obviously evil madman, the Democrat won the heavily gerrymandered** electoral college by a margin of well under a combined 50,000 total votes in a few swing states. This in an election where more than 155 million voted for either Biden or Trump. (Similarly, Hillary lost by 78,000 votes in 3 critical states despite 2.8 million more popular votes nationwide).

Imagine what would have been the outcome if there had been no pandemic.

Imagine if some 3rd party fuckheads had screwed things up in some of these close states

**I've been taken to task for using gerrymandered as an adjective describing the Electoral College and the Senate. Technically, I know gerrymander is a term used to describe the drawing of congressional and legislative districts in a biased manner. But I use the term loosely to also describe the greater weighting of voters in less populous states on a per-person basis in the Electoral College and the Senate, which overall favors the Repukes. (Especially the Senate, where just 16% of the population is represented by 50% of the senators.)

[rocktivity]

31. DING DING DING! Progee, you're our grand prize winner!

Last edited Wed Mar 6, 2024, 11:54 AM - Edit history (39)

Imagine what would have been the outcome if there had been no pandemic.

I imagine that it would have been a replay of 2016, with most people voting in person by machine, and just enough machine votes in the swing states getting flipped to Trump without arousing suspicion.

But in concert with Trump exposing his incompetence, bigotry, and flair for self-serving despotism, his handling of the pandemic took away mass in-person machine voting as a viable option, resulting in nearly 70% of the total vote being cast by mail-in or early request ballot. THAT'S why Trump immediately declared war on the postal service: out of fear that mail-in voters would comprise the real "landslide majority."

I also imagine that your 42,800 "margin of victory" votes out of the 11 million AZ/GA/WI votes cast for Biden or Trump would have been a LOT easier to flip if only thirty rather than seventy percent of them had been cast by mail.


rocktivity

[badboy67]

29. Trump's callous disregard and indifference to the virus and the suffering of the Nation

led to his downfall.

Good riddance.

We're all better off for his ouster.

[BadGimp]

30. re: "It is unclear if Trump has seen the report."

He could not read it if he wanted to.