...but almost won
By Andrew E. Busch
In the wake of the presidential election half of our divided nation asked, incredulously: how did Donald Trump lose? Equally incredulously, the other half asked: how could he have almost won?
Joe Biden’s victory will not change the Democratic and Republican parties’ basic dilemmas. For Democrats, the “fundamental transformation” of America promised by Barack Obama is still far from electorally secure. For their part, Republicans haven’t found a way to appeal to a majority of voters—even had Trump won the Electoral College, no fraud claims could have erased Biden’s 7 million national-vote lead.
Why Trump Lost
Granted, the election polls’ repeated underestimating of the Trump vote suggests the possibility of “shy Trump voters.” It’s also possible (though not certain) that job approval polls similarly underestimated Trump’s support throughout his presidency. But it is important not to exaggerate the significance of this effect. Real Clear Politics election polling averaged a Biden lead of 7.2% on Election Day. The end result was a national Biden lead of 4.5%. If one incorporates a similar effect to Trump’s approval ratings from the beginning of his presidency through election day he would still be the most consistently unpopular president since polling began. Most presidents have experienced lows; many have been in the low 40s a year before being re-elected. No one has spent their entire presidency there.Trump’s defeat should not have surprised anyone. It is a truism of presidential elections that, when an incumbent runs for re-election, the election is largely a referendum on the incumbent. This incumbent was the most consistently unpopular president since polling began. According to presidential job approval surveys, fewer than 40% of Americans approved of Trump’s performance for most of his first year in office, and fewer than 45% for most of the remainder of his presidency.
The Real Clear Politics approval average showed him reaching a high of 47% after rallying the country to confront COVID-19 in late March 2020, before falling again. His approval ratings were “underwater”—the number approving outnumbered by the number disapproving—from January 27, 2017 for the remainder of his presidency.
The remarkable stability of Trump’s (low) approval ratings was matched by a remarkable stability in Biden’s lead over Trump since mid-2019 when pollsters began regularly asking questions about head-to-head matchups. Biden led by about five percentage points for over a year until building an even larger lead in early October. Some of that lead at the end of the race was clearly dubious, and may have been before. But, again, probably not enough to erase it...
