IS TRUMP’S 2020 CAMPAIGN FOCUSED ON THE WRONG APPROACH?

…Will the 2020 Trump work out by using the 2016 type of campaign rally?

The data shows that election turnout is only one of the items needed for a campaign win!

It is hard to believe the president’s campaign strategists that say they are planning to stoke the turnout from Trump’s base for their 2020 campaign strategy.  This approach, has been all the rage in past elections.  However, with today’s polarization between the nation’s voters, this strategy today will most likely lose more voters than it gains.

In reality, only stoking election turnout is today, as outmoded as are coin-operated telephones.

The data just doesn’t support that approach, especially with a campaign candidate such as the bragging and less-than-honest Donald J. Trump.

A recent analysis shows that the 2018 Democrats alone would not have won back the House without persuading millions of former Republicans and independent voters to back the Democrats.

Trump’s own 2016 victory points to persuasion, not to turnout as the key.  Exit polls showed that over 18% of all voters did not like Trump or Hillary on Election Day.  Pre-election polls examining that particular bloc of voters found they were largely undecided or were considering third-party candidates up until late October.  It was their last-minute decision to reluctantly give Trump a vote over a politician that has been in the political limelight over the past three decades.  It was not unprecedented turnout surges that gave Trump his surprising wins throughout the Midwest.

In fact, one must remember that Trump won the three important states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with less than a total of 80,000 votes, and that’s the total of all three states.

Data from past midterm elections also supports that same, “persuasion template”.  Democrats carried independents by large margins in back in 2006, and the Republicans did the same in their 2010 landslide.  The composition of the electorate did not change that much between those election years; the difference was that millions of voters changed their minds, which as in 2016, it also threw off many of the major election polls.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that turnout is unimportant.  Increased turnout in 2016 definitely helped Republicans, and Trump persuaded many non-college-educated white voters who sat out 2012 to vote for Trump in 2016.  

Certainly, Barack Obama was significantly helped in both of his presidential bids by record-high turnout among African Americans.  However, in all these cases, turnout alone did not drive the victory.  The data shows that persuading swing voters was the real key.

So for Trump, turnout efforts can help Trump’s reelection.  However, they need to be focused on a very small group.  That group is again the non-college-educated, whites who are not regular habitual voters.  (They also have to focus on those voters that devour Fox News on a regular basis.)  The analysis shows that non-college-educated whites, they vote at rates roughly comparable to African Americans and at much lower rates than college-educated whites.  Given the large size of this population, even seemingly small increases in voting could bring a number of Trump voters to the polls.  Since non-college-educated whites are Trump’s core support group, focusing on this discrete population could yield large dividends for Trump.

But, simply targeting this focused demographic isn’t near enough. 

We must understand that nonvoters tend to be either disinterested in politics, or they believe their votes won’t matter.  If Trump’s core message were enough, this group would already be voting at higher rates than it is. Therefore, a successful turnout strategy for this key group actually requires a successful "persuasion strategy" to actually work.

Persuasion also needs to be directed at a host of other groups.

The Trump campaign told Time Magazine that its initial research shows Trump’s position on China is a motivating issue for Latinos in the Southwest.

This should not come as a surprise because Latino voters gave Republican incumbents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, much higher than normal support in their re-election bids.   And both of these presidents campaigned extensively on patriotic themes that involved standing up to identifiable foes.  The foe of the Soviet Union was for Reagan, and it was the false info on Iraq and the ISIS terrorists foe for George W. Bush.  

In addition, Latinos are also more likely to have working-class jobs.  That’s exactly the sort of work that is threatened by competition from the Chinese.  Therefore, a campaign that focuses less on immigration and more on fighting China would likely resonate among both white and Hispanic working-class voters, and of course, that is Trump’s base.

The president will also need to “persuade” some of the millions of “reluctant” 2016 Trump voters who backed Democratic candidates in 2018, to return to his support.  

In 2016,  Trump effectively persuaded the reluctant voters that Clinton was worse than him, even though these voters disliked both candidates.  If he can’t change these voters’ current image of Trump, he needs to run a campaign that argues that “Never a Socialist” is more important than “Never Trump.”  This message is even more important as a turn-out message for his base by his presenting this as a clear and present threat that can only be stopped by the base going to the polls.

Trump’s unconventional style covers-up just how unconventional his 2016 approach and win really was.  He identified a base in the primaries and then persuaded them to go to the polls.  He then broadened his general election support by embracing more core issues in his campaign approach.   His most important promise was to appoint conservative judges, and he's kept that promise.  Finally, he made the general election a clear choice for any undecided voters.  Back then it was: “Never Hillary” or “Never Trump," nothing in between.  

His rallies and rhetoric also seemed unique, but actually this tried and true approach is what every election consultant learns in election campaign school.

President Trump’s re-election campaign needs to follow the same model, adapting it to reflect any new issues and new personalities.

But the Democratic candidate needs to take on Trump directly and disallow him to get away with his lies and giving nicknames and making personal attacks.  They need to address what the people are really concerned about, such as the cost of prescription drugs & low wages, not to be sidelined by Trump’s direct personal attacks.

We can only hope that Trump will fall for his campaign’s idea of a turnout-only approach.  If that occurs, Trump could be the surprised candidate ending up standing behind the new president-elect on the 2021 Inauguration Day.

Copyright G. Ater 2019