A PERFECT STORM

The PRIMARY MODEL gave Donald Trump a 91% chance of winning the 2020 presidential election, with Democrat Joe Biden having just a 9% chance. Trump was predicted to get 362 electoral votes, Biden 176.  This forecast, first posted March 2, 2020, on Twitter, was unconditional and final; hence not subject to any updating.  Contrary to the forecast, Joe Biden was elected president with 306 electoral votes to 232 for Donald Trump. What went wrong?

To begin with, the 2020 miss of the Primary Model was most extraordinary. From 1912 to 2016, there were 19 presidential elections in which a sitting president like Donald Trump sought re-election, at least at the beginning of the respective election year. Thirteen of those incumbents won their party’s primary elections in a landslide (getting more than 60% of the primary vote). In November every one of them won the general election. 13 for 13. No exception.

In contrast, there were six sitting presidents who fell short of that mark in primaries. Every one of them wound up losing in November or saw his party lose the White House. That’s 6 for 6. Note that in 1952 and 1968, the sitting presidents (Truman and Johnson), who entered the primaries, later withdrew. Either way, a sub-par primary performance by a sitting president spells doom in November.

Put together, the Primary Model works perfectly for elections with incumbent presidents: a landslide victory in primaries guarantees victory in November; anything less than a landslide guarantees defeat. The record is 19 for 19. With a primary vote of 85.6% in 2020, Trump was perfectly poised to make it 20 for 20. And doing so in 2020. A catchy rhyme, but no cigar.  What went wrong in 2020?

The answer is simple and apparent: a perfect storm. A once-in-a-century combination of election-year surprises wreaked havoc on a forecast posted as early as March 2.  The first was the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic; then, triggered by the lockdown aimed to keep people safe, came an economic downturn of a scale not seen since the Great Depression; then, with the same goal in mind, came an unprecedented expansion of voting by mail; add to that the killing of George Floyd, which sparked a wave of racial unrest not seen since the 1960’s.  This cascade of election-year “surprises” was unprecedented. It was bound to affect the outcome of the election in November. How much was a matter of a lot of speculation.

In the end, according to exit polls, those surprises spelled bad news for the president in office, whom the Primary Model happened to forecast as the winner in November (https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2020/general-results/voter-analysis). Note that this type of poll covered both early voters and mail-in voters in addition to those who went to the polls on Election Day.

Voters were gloomy about getting the coronavirus pandemic under control. A majority felt it was “not at all” under control, and their votes favored Biden over Trump by a better than 5-1 ratio.  

The assessment of the economy fared little better. A majority rated its condition as “poor” or “not so good.”   Their votes also favored Biden over Trump by a lopsided ratio of 3-1.

Add to it widespread concern over racism in policing in the wake of the George Floyd killing. A large group of voters close to a majority considered racism in policing a very serious problem and wound up voting 5-1 for Biden over Trump.  

Finally, the easing of rules for voting by mail in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic led to a vast expansion of the group of voters who chose that option in 2020: 4 of 10 availed themselves of this option to cast their vote this time. It turned out, as widely expected and feared by the Trump campaign, that Biden garnered the lion share of votes cast by mail (66% to 32% for Trump).  

Without much doubt many of them would have gone to the polls and cast the same vote in person if mail-in voting had not been so easily available in 2020. Mailing your vote does not make you change whom you vote for. That being said, the surge of turnout recorded for 2020 is absolutely staggering. By official count, 158 million Americans voted for president in 2020 compared with 137 million in 2016. This is nearly three times the increase between 2012 (129 million) and 2016. The easing of mail-in voting certainly had something to do with such a massive boost in turnout; it sharply reduced the cost of voting, which may have kept some voters away from the polls in previous years.  If one further assumes that such voters are inclined to vote Democratic it would follow that Biden’s win in 2020 owes much to the surge of mail-in voting.  This would be a benign view of such voting. A more sinister view, as pushed by the Trump campaign, is that mail-in voting was rife with fraud. Some battleground states like Pennsylvania dispensed with signature verification of mail-in votes. Without it, it is impossible to know if a mail-in vote was actually submitted by the right person.  Be that as it may, the surge in mail-in voting was a major election-year surprise that wreaked havoc on the forecast of a Trump victory. 

Some will say, however, that even before the coronavirus outbreak Trump’s electoral prospect was dim and a forecast of his victory wide of the mark. To be sure, Trump’s job approval rating at the beginning of 2020 was under water, as it were. His average for January-February 2020 in the Gallup Poll was 47% (https://news.gallup.com/poll/203207/trump-job-approval-weekly.aspx). Was his campaign for reelection before it began?  And before all the surprises started to pile up? 

Gallup polls make it possible to chart the approval ratings of Trump predecessors as far back as FDR.

(https://news.gallup.com/interactives/185273/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx)

And yes, such a chart tells us that just about every president whose approval rating early in the election year topped 50% went on to win in November (getting more than 50% of the two-party vote).  At the same time, most of the sitting presidents who fell short of 50% approval early on went on to defeat in November (getting less than 50% of the two-party vote).  Bush in 1992 and Ford in 1976 certainly fit this pattern, and the sub-par approval in 1952 and 1968 spelled doom for the party in those years. Also Carter (1980), whose approval settled below 50% in March-April as the Iranian-hostage rally, which had boosted his approval above 50% earlier, wore off.  On the other hand, the approval ratings of Obama in 2012 and Clinton in 1996 were below 50% at the beginning of the election year, and Nixon’s in 1972 just on the cusp. All of them nonetheless went on to victory in November. Trump’s approval rating puts him right in the company of those victorious candidates at the beginning of the election year. Unlike them, however, Trump failed to raise his approval rating in the course of the election year above the 50% mark, which would promise victory. Why was he unable to do so? This question takes us back to the perfect storm of elements that sets 2020 apart. Judging by the experience of previous presidents, however, the race was not lost before it began.