President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump attend the 2020 Salute to America event Saturday, July 4, 2020, on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)
Despite polls that show former VP Joe Biden in the lead in the 2020 presidential race, Americans aren’t buying it. They believe President Trump will win the race. David Catron explains at The American Spectator, writing (abridged)
According to the Gallup survey, “56% of Americans expect Trump to prevail over Biden in the November election, while 40% think Biden will win.” This includes 90 percent of Republicans, 56 percent of independents, and 24 percent of Democrats. This is not the first time Gallup has polled voter expectations: The polling firm asked Americans for their predictions in every election year from 1996 through 2012: “In each of these polls, Americans accurately predicted the winner of the popular vote.”
Gallup provides a crucial piece of the puzzle by posing this question to registered voters: “Would you say you and your family are better off now than you were four years ago, or are you worse off now?” The percentage who said they are “better off” after four years of the Trump presidency was far higher than it has been for the last two incumbents. When President Obama ran for a second term in 2012, only 45 percent of voters said they were better off than they had been four years earlier.
Significantly, even the polls that purport to show Trump behind Biden on most issues indicate that the voters still hold a favorable view of President Trump on the economy. The latest ABC/Washington Post poll, for example, found that “54 percent of voters approve of his performance.” Trump is also regarded by the electorate as better suited to manage the economy than Biden. A recent Harvard–HarrisX poll indicates that voters favor Trump over Biden by 53-47 on this issue. A recent Fox News survey reported that a 53-46 majority of voters take this view and a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that its respondents agree by a 48-41 margin.
by DAVID CATRON
