President Donald J. Trump honors Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell during the federal judicial confirmation milestones event, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2019, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Despite pollsters’, and Democrats’, predictions of a “Blue Wave,” Americans largely voted for conservative rule at the ballot box in 2020. J.B. Shurk writes in The Federalist (abridged):
The media and pollsters, of course, predicted a Biden landslide, not a very narrow squeaker in which Democrats lost in almost every other avenue of government. Considering the following five facts about the election, it’s no wonder Biden failed to achieve a landslide victory.
Not since President Grover Cleveland’s re-election campaign in 1888 has a sitting president won more votes the second time around and still lost,
This is a huge number. According to Gallup, only 32 percent of Americans say they aren’t better off since Trump was inaugurated. No sitting president has lost re-election when more than half of the country is doing better than before the incumbent entered office.
In June, during the middle of the pandemic, pollster Scott Rasmussen was blown away by the enthusiasm gap between Trump and Biden voters. He wrote in amazement: “Wow! 76 percent of Trump voters are enthusiastic about their candidate compared to just 49 percent of Biden voters.”
Just as in 2016, polling this election cycle proved decisively wrong. Republicans in the House, Senate, and state legislatures across the country all out-performed polling estimates.
Just 12 days before the election, Trump’s approval rating popped over 50 percent and has held steady since that time. As Gallup noted, “[A]ll incumbents with an approval rating of 50 percent or higher have won re-election,
By J.B. Shurk
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