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…
“Seniors are a good strength to have because they’re big in terms of expansion,” Biden pollster John Anzalone told me. “The six core battleground states are older than people realize. Certainly people think of Arizona and Florida as having big senior populations, but so does the upper Midwest. Even when you expand into Iowa, you‘re still looking at a lot of senior voters.” The shift among seniors is not just an interesting cross-tab—it’s a wholesale realignment of the Democratic electorate. It puts Iowa and Ohio firmly back on the electoral map, diminishes Trump’s support everywhere else, and even makes states like Kansas and Missouri—which have only been lightly polled but have plenty of suburbanites and aging voters—look like tempting flips for optimists tinkering with the 270toWin map.
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