In April 2011, Whet Moser of Chicago Magazine, wrote a piece with an intriguing subtitle: “How Alan Keyes’s substantial–but not 100 percent total–loss to Barack Obama–explains the world, or at least birthers and the sudden political popularity of Donald Trump.” It was a retrospective article that looked at the 2004 Illinois senate race that launched Barack Hussein Obama to national prominence. But it was also forward-looking, as Moser was already noting something stirring with the Republican base toward Donald Trump and his Birther movement.
The contest between Obama and Keyes had already become a kind of measure of what percentage of the electorate is so blinded by either stupidity, insanity or raw partisanship that it will never under any circumstances vote for the Democrats. This was spawned by a hilarious piece screenwriter John Rodgers wrote in 2005 at his blog Kung Fu Monkey. In that post, Rodgers created a pretend conversation with his black friend Tyrone as they mused on how low President Bush’s approval numbers could go. They currently stood at 37 percent, and Tyrone insisted that they could go no lower than 27 percent.
John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is —
Tyrone: 27%.
John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority.
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
Once this post went viral, the 27 percent floor became known as either the “Crazification Factor” or the “Alan Keyes Constant.” Over time, it’s been remarkable to see how many different unpopular opinions bottom out at approximately 27 percent in surveys. Whenever that happens, people inevitably shrug and make reference to the Alan Keyes Constant.
But I don’t think the number is correct for presidential campaigns. With the stakes so much higher than a mere Senate race, I think raw partisanship has more influence. So, if we ask how low Donald Trump’s approval number can go or how badly he might do in the popular vote in 2020, I think we need to project something closer to 37 percent.
Right now, people are beginning to lose confidence in Trump’s shepherding of the economy and his poll numbers are slipping as a result. But he’s still stubbornly holding on at around 40 percent. In the just-released Quinnipiac poll, he’s losing badly to all the top-tier Democratic candidates:
If the 2020 presidential election were held today, 54 percent of registered voters say that they would vote for former Vice President Joe Biden, while only 38 percent would vote for President Trump. Matchups against other top Democrats show:
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders topping Trump 53 – 39 percent;
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren ahead of Trump 52 – 40 percent;
California Sen. Kamala Harris beating Trump 51 – 40 percent;
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg leading with 49 percent to Trump’s 40 percent.Looking at all of the matchups, President Trump is stuck between 38 and 40 percent of the vote. These low numbers may partly be explained by a lack of support among white women, a key voting bloc that voted for Trump in the 2016 election. Today, white women go for the Democratic candidate by double digits in every scenario. Though it is a long 14 months until Election Day, Trump’s vulnerability among this important voting group does not bode well for him.
“In hypothetical matchups between President Trump and the top five Democratic presidential candidates, one key number is 40,” said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Mary Snow. “It’s the ceiling of support for Trump, no matter the candidate. It hovers close to his job approval rating, which has stayed in a tight range since being elected.”
Voters say 56 – 38 percent that they disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president, compared to the 54 – 40 percent disapproval he received a month ago.
Now, if I’m right that the presidential Crazification Factor is actually 37 percent rather than 27 percent, then Trump is already nearing his absolute bottom. But I think this is deceptive.
One important element is that people are more willing to vote for people like Alan Keyes or Donald Trump than they are to admit they voted or intend to vote for them. These self-consciously crazy people probably make up a good ten percent of the Republican base. Collectively, they’re good for a few extra points above whatever the polls predict.
So, for example, if only 38 percent of the people say they approve of Trump’s job performance, you can still count on a few points for people who secretly approve but are lying about that to the pollsters. You can add another few points for partisans who hate Trump but are so committed to conservative issues (abortion, for example) that they’d vote for a rabid muppet over any conceivable Democratic nominee.
This kind of hyper-partisan behavior usually shows up as a late narrowing in the polls as Election Day approaches. Some people blame former FBI director James Comey for this happening in 2016, but that may be overstated.
To be safe, I’d add at least six points to Trump’s total above and beyond whatever the polls are giving him. If we anticipate vote suppression shenanigans, we probably have to jack it up to seven or eight points.
In other words, if Trump’s true floor is 37 percent, that means he can probably sink to about 29 or 30 percent in approval numbers and still meet that mark. It also means that if he’s at 42 percent or above, he has a real chance of being reelected in another nail-biter, perhaps with the assistance of the Electoral College.
In either case, I do not believe he has come close to reaching his floor. If the economy struggles and people are thrown out of work, he may crater down to his lower limit.
It’s hard to judge where this would put him historically because we’ve had so many multi-candidate presidential campaigns. In 1936, Alf Landon only won 36.5 percent of the popular vote. That’s the low mark of the modern era for an essentially two-way campaign. But, of course, Landon was the challenger rather than the incumbent. To find a better equivalent, we might look at George H.W. Bush who only got 37.5% in his 1992 reelection bid. But that was a three-way race including H. Ross Perot. In 1980, Jimmy Carter was voted out of office while garnering only 41% of the vote. Trump has the potential to lose in even more humiliating fashion.
Yet, because you can expect Trump to substantially outperform both his approval numbers and his polls, he can’t be counted out. As long as he keeps his head above 40 percent, he’s probably in position to have a puncher’s chance of winning reelection.
What you’re identifying is interesting but it’s actually reversed in what we’ve seen in a lot of the other polls: Trump’s election number is consistently BELOW his approval in the poll itself.
Eye on the ball. Re-elect for presidents in modern era matches approval. There aren’t any “shy” Trump supporters. If on election night he is at 42% approval he will get ~42-44% of the vote.
Kyle Kondik has more.
If, and it’s a big ‘if’, it turns out that Russians have been co-signing Trumps loans, there is no bottom.
I think it’s very optimistic to posit that there are no voters who register disapproval of Trump but will vote for him over any possible Democratic nominee. Moreover, Trump has already demonstrated once that his support is not fully reflected in polling results, so it’s not safe to assume that this pattern will not repeat, at least to some degree. I think the shy Trump voter should actually be much more pronounced this time around, as a vote for Trump is harder to defend given his performance in office. But partisans who care about abortion, taxes, regulation or warding off socialism may vote for him anyway especially at the last moment when the choice becomes real.
I do not posit that per se, as I believe if he’s at 42% approval he probably gets around 44% of the vote. But it is interesting nonetheless that he continues to register lower support in polls than his approval, which is normally not what we see. It’s not what we saw with Obama, where his vote share was typically higher than his approval (though as the graph shows, he lined up almost precisely with the historical record when it came time to go to the polls).
If anything, Trump has to worry about the people who don’t approve of him and won’t approve of his challenger. He’s losing those voters by gargantuan margins, whereas he won them in 2016.
There’s some psychological value in providing a “factor of safety” if you want to put your mind at ease, but I’m going with “Trump doesn’t defy political gravity and he doesn’t have a groundswell of hidden support. ~42% approval is ~44% voteshare.” Maybe third parties add up to 8% this time and 44% is enough. I doubt it.
Let’s say third parties add up to 8% in 2020 (as opposed to 6% in 2016). Then let’s say Trump loses the popular vote by 3 percentage points (as opposed to 2 percentage points to Clinton in 2016), 44.5% to 47.5%.
With those numbers, it’s easy to imagine any number of scenarios in which Trump still wins the electoral college vote (e.g., he loses NH & PA but keeps MI & WI; he loses NH, MI & WI but keeps PA; he loses AZ & GA but keeps FL & TX).
Note: we could all drive ourselves nuts with these hypothetical scenarios. Best to keep registering voters and knocking on doors.
Yes, so the only scenario whereby this level of approval is sufficient is if he drives the Dem nominee approval very low, and props up third party challengers. I expect the Democratic nominee to be underwater in approval, though not to Clinton levels. I also don’t expect third party vote to go up. It was unusually high because people told themselves they had a freebie to express their displeasure at the nominees. No such freebies exist anymore. Unless someone prominent runs, I expect it to be below 3%.
The only way a third party candidate does well in this cycle is if they run as a Republican alternative to Trump. This generally won’t help the Democrat however, at least not as much as one might think. A vote for third party to register disapproval of Trump means that the Democrat doesn’t get that vote. In a binary election where Trump isn’t an option, the Dem gets one and Trump loses one, for a net of two.
Still, Trump losing a net of one, over and over, is still a problem for him.
I think if Romney wanted to be the hero he thinks himself as he could run only on the ballot line in Utah to prevent Trump from winning their electors. Unless all the electors were to choose to be faithless and give their votes to Trump anyway (which a federal Court has ruled is fine). All other third party challengers would generally favor Trump, I think, including if Romney tried to get on every state ballot.
I love this idea, would that he had any pride in this country or in his own self to stand up to Trump in this way. A protest vote of that caliber, or from Huntsman, would either give a Dem a shot of winning or otherwise take those EVs off the board.
I thought that was McMuffin’s true aim back in ’16. And he still couldn’t pull it off.
This one resonated with me, and I’m pleased you gave the 27% theorem prominence. It might be the most apt political theorem of our times, right up there with ‘eating sparrows under a bridge…..’
Over these many years you’ve stated the possibility of a Democratic wipe out of the Republican Party, and for the first time I can see the outline of a possibility of maybe, if things fall correctly, and everything aligns, Trump might be the guy to make it happen. He poisons everything he touches, or even thinks about…and that includes the Republican Party.
It’s why I get frustrated when you seem to advocate the safe course as far as 2020 goes. There is an opportunity here, it’s no time for safe routes, it’s time for all, or nothing. We simple do not have the years to devote to an obviously doomed to failure Biden Administration.
It’s time for all in.
.
Latest polls are not so favorable for the progressives.
Yes, like always. But being called a ‘libtard’ or a socialist just does not have the sting it used to, particularly with the youngsters, whom laugh at such titles. Being educated, and without lead filled air will do that.
The world has changed. It really has. Right now we don’t quite know what that change will result in, but IMHO it won’t be further schism. Polls for progressives might be low, but polls for progressive programs? Not so much. We need a ‘great articulator’, and Biden is not that person.
.
I do hope we are not stuck with Biden. And I also believe times are changing,
Yes, indeed. Even more so if there’s a third party candidate who pulls more than a couple of percentage points of the total vote. Democrats in Maine still have nightmares about Gov. Paul (“I was Trump before Trump”) LePage’s successful re-election campaign in 2014.
5
4
Think you missed a part of the GOP that will not vote. They cannot vote for a Dem and will not give the donald another 4 years. This will be all those conservatives that have been directly effected by the donald’s trade/tariffic mess.
5
None of this speculation can take into account the coming efforts by Repugnicans and their friends to hack and otherwise undermine the election, which are certain to occur on an unprecedented scale. They have been making no secret of their preparations. The orange bolus himself has explicitly stated his intentions to violate the integrity of the election.
While some might consider that last item among grounds for impeachment, the situation has not affected the Speaker’s insistence that it all be resolved in the voting booth; in fact, it seems not to figure much in her PR at all.
We are in totally uncharted territory here.
I don’t believe it is possible for Strongman Trump to receive less than 40% of the popular vote, and I’d bet money he receives over 42%.
Approval polls for Strongman Trump don’t mean much of anything. There are plenty of people who know they’re fucking scumbags but will hide it from other people when questioned if they are a fucking scumbag. Trust.
5