Biden holds daunting lead over Trump as US
election enters final stretch
US
elections 2020
With 100 days to go, polls show the president
languishing as the pandemic takes its toll. But analysts expect surprises
Lauren
Gambino
Lauren
Gambino in Washington
@laurenegambino
Sun 26 Jul
2020 08.00 BSTLast modified on Sun 26 Jul 2020 13.11 BST
A poll this month showed Donald Trump trailing Joe
Biden 55%-40% among registered voters as ratings for his handling of the
coronavirus crisis have plummeted.
One hundred
days before the presidential election, Joe Biden has built a commanding and
enduring lead over Donald Trump, whose path to victory has narrowed
considerably in the months since the coronavirus pandemic began.
The
president’s fortunes appear increasingly tied to the trajectory of a public
health crisis he has failed to contain, with the death toll past 145,000 and
the economy in turmoil.
A
Washington Post-ABC News poll this month showed Biden far ahead of Trump, 55%
to 40% among registered voters. That contrasted with March, when Biden and
Trump were locked in a near tie as the virus was just beginning to spread.
The same
poll found Trump’s approval ratings had crumbled to 39%, roughly the same share
of the electorate that approved of his response to the outbreak while 60%
disapproved. Especially troubling for the president are a new spate of polls
that suggest he is losing his edge on the economy, formerly Biden’s greatest
vulnerability.
“It is very
hard to envision a scenario where you can make an argument for the president’s
re-election if unemployment is well over 10% and there’s no sign that the
pandemic is under control,” said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist who was
an adviser for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“The
political environment and the economic situation could look very different 100
days from now, but if the election were held today, it is very likely that the
former vice-president would win – and pretty substantially.”
Surveys
show Biden ahead in a clutch of battleground states that secured Trump’s
victory in 2016, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. A Quinnipiac
University poll of Florida, seen as crucial for Trump, found Biden up by 13 points.
Biden’s
campaign is now eyeing an expanded electoral map that could also deliver
control of the Senate, challenging Trump in traditionally Republican states
like Arizona, where the president has consistently led in statewide polls, as
well as in conservative strongholds like Texas, where a new Quinnipiac poll
found the candidates neck-and-neck.
Trump has
dismissed polling that shows him losing as “fake”, adamant that he defied
Beltway prognosticators in 2016 and is poised to do it again. “I’m not losing,”
he insisted during a recent Fox News Sunday interview, when presented with the
network’s latest poll showing him trailing Biden by eight points.
Political
strategists caution that much can – and almost certainly will – change in the
coming months, especially in a race shaped so profoundly by the pandemic. There
is a general expectation the contest will be closely fought, as presidential
elections have been for decades in a deeply polarized climate.
At the same
time, widespread uncertainty hangs over the security and administration of an
election again threatened by foreign interference and disinformation. The
pandemic has raised new concerns about voting procedures, amid Trump’s
escalating attacks on mail-in ballots and unprecedented efforts to sow doubt
about the legitimacy of the result in November.
Trump’s
prospects likely hinge on his ability to persuade Americans he deserves a
second term. Yet he remains almost-singularly focused on rallying a loyal but
shrinking core of supporters. In recent weeks, he has sought to stoke white
fear and cultural backlash with an aggressive response to anti-racism protests,
a defense of Confederate monuments and a dark Fourth of July speech in which he
claimed children are being taught to “hate” America.
The
approach worked in 2016, but the nation has changed, transformed by the
pandemic, economic crisis and a growing racial justice movement ignited by the
death of George Floyd.
“Trump’s
problem is that he wants to run a campaign like it’s 2016, but he’s been the
guy in charge for the last four years,” said Heidi Heitkamp, a former
Democratic senator from North Dakota.
Heitkamp
believes Trump’s re-election chances are bound up with his economic approval
rating. Once a bright spot for the president, voter dissatisfaction with his
handling of the economy has risen ominously as the outbreak worsened in many
parts of the country.
Without a
strong economy to preside over, she said Trump “doesn’t have a theory of the
case for his re-election.”
In recent
weeks, the president has tried to draw attention to criticisms of Biden and
frame the election as a choice between a political outsider and an
establishment insider. But Trump is no longer the insurgent of 2016. He is the
president, amid a historic crisis that a majority of Americans say he has
mishandled.
Even his
supporters view November as a referendum on his presidency. Among Trump voters,
72% said re-electing him was most important to them in this election, the
Washington Post-ABC News poll found. Among Biden voters, 67% said it was most
important to defeat the president.
There are
signs the president is beginning to grasp the severity of the challenges facing
him. After weeks of dismissing surges in infections, hospitalizations and
deaths across the south and west as the last “embers” of a pandemic that had
been largely curbed, Trump abruptly changed his posture.
He has
encouraged Americans to wear face masks – which he had long resisted – and
resumed the White House coronavirus news conference.
On
Thursday, Trump announced that the Republican convention in Jacksonville,
Florida, would be cancelled, citing the threat of the virus, which is ravaging
the state. Democrats have also scrapped plans for a traditional convention,
moving their event largely online.
Since
becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee in April, Biden has run a
relatively low-key campaign from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, improving
his standing in the race even as he shrunk from the national spotlight.
Despite a
contentious primary, the party has largely united behind him while his campaign
has ramped up fundraising, narrowing the president’s once-vast cash advantage.
Biden is
also buoyed by polls showing him carrying women by a historic margin and
building a lead with independents and moderates. Since Trump’s election, white
suburban women have fled the Republican party, joining with women of color to
help Democrats regain the House in 2018. In recent weeks, Trump has attacked
Biden on such turf, issuing blunt appeals to the “Suburban Housewives of
America”.
As in 2016,
both candidates are widely disliked, a reflection of deep polarization and the
disenchantment many Americans feel. That year, voters who disliked both
candidates swung hard for Trump. Four years later, polling suggests voters who
don’t like their options – the so-called “haters” – strongly prefer Biden.
Perhaps
even more worrisome for Trump is an erosion of support among older voters, who
are disproportionately vulnerable to the pandemic. Retaining his dominance with
such Americans, who tend to turn out at higher rates and are overly represented
in swing states, is critical.
There are
risks for Biden, too, particularly as the race intensifies.
Trump
supporters are far more enthusiastic and committed to voting than are
supporters of Biden. And Democrats worry particularly about support from black,
Hispanic and young voters, who are crucial to building a winning coalition.
“Who he
picks for VP is going to tell us a lot about not only what his vision is but
it’s going to tell us the direction of the Democratic party,” said LaTosha
Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, describing it as the “most
significant” decision Biden will make in the next 100 days.
Biden has
vowed to name a woman, but Brown believes choosing a black woman would “meet
the moment”.
“We’re in
the midst of a highly racially polarized environment,” she said. “Black people
are, quite frankly, fed up. People are not going to be OK with politics as
usual.”
Few count
Trump out. If the pandemic abates and the economy rebounds, he could benefit. A
national disaster or a supreme court vacancy could shift the dynamics of the
race. The Trump campaign’s massive ad campaign to define Biden as weak and
ineffectual could begin to resonate.
“This race
is far from over,” said Sam Nunberg, a former adviser to Trump. “The president
has proved that he can come back from behind before.”
Yet after
years of bending reality to his political will, Trump has seemingly accepted
that he cannot will the coronavirus away.
Ian Sams, a
Democratic strategist and adviser to Navigator Research, a left-leaning polling
firm which tracks public opinion on the coronavirus, has closely monitored the
relationship between approval of the president’s handling of the pandemic and
judgements of the candidates.
Most voters
view the 2020 election “through the prism of the pandemic”, said Sams, who
previously worked on Kamala Harris’s campaign for the Democratic nomination and
for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“Unless
something fundamentally changes – and we have 100 days so anything can happen –
the handling of the pandemic is going to be the central question in voters’
minds when they step into the voting booth in November.”
Biden's path to the White House could hit a dead end on Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg’s autocratic nature and fear of
anti-trust legislation might see him plump for Trump in the race for president
Carole Cadwalladr: If you’re not terrified about
Facebook, you haven’t been paying attention
John
Naughton
Sun 26 Jul
2020 10.00 BSTLast modified on Sun 26 Jul 2020 12.41 BST
Way back in
June, I wrote a column under the headline: “One man stands between Joe Biden
and the US presidency – Mark Zuckerberg”. Trump, flailing against the pandemic
at the time, was trailing Biden in the polls, just as at the same point in 2016
he had been trailing Hillary Clinton. And yet we know what happened that
November: Trump’s team made inspired use of Facebook’s targeting engine to
suppress Democratic turnout in key states – and it worked. What is perhaps less
well known is that Facebook offered to “embed” employees for free in the
campaign offices of both candidates to help them use the platform effectively.
Clinton’s campaign refused the offer. Trump’s crowd accepted, and Facebook
employees helped his campaign craft the messages that may have clinched the
election.
So here we
are in 2020, 100 days from the presidential election. Trump is still trailing
Biden. But his base support has remained solid. So the point I made in June
still stands: if he is to win a second term, Facebook will be his only hope –
which is why his campaign is betting the ranch on it. And if Facebook were
suddenly to decide that it would not allow its platform to be used by either
campaign in the period from now until 3 November, Trump would be a one-term
president, free to spend even more time with his golf buggy – and perhaps his
lawyers.
For
Facebook read Zuckerberg, for Facebook is not just a corporate extension of its
founder’s personality, but his personal plaything. I can’t think of any other
tech founder who has retained such an iron grip on his creation through his
ownership of a special class of shares, which give him total control. The
passage in the company’s SEC filing detailing this makes for surreal reading.
It says that Zuckerberg “has the ability to control the outcome of matters
submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors
and any merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our
assets. This concentrated control could delay, defer, or prevent a change of
control, merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our
assets that our other stockholders support, or conversely this concentrated
control could result in the consummation of such a transaction that our other
stockholders do not support.”
Such a
concentration of power in the hands of a single individual would be a concern
in any enterprise, but in a global company that effectively controls and
mediates much of the world’s public sphere it is distinctly creepy. This
impression is reinforced vividly whenever Zuckerberg has to make a public
appearance, especially when he has to wear a suit – as he did when appearing
before US Congress in April 2018. On such occasions he can look like a tailor’s
dummy, a man whose sense of humour has been surgically removed at birth.
This
caricature, wrote Evan Osnos in an absorbing New Yorker profile, is that of an
automaton with little regard for the human dimensions of his work. “The truth
is something else: he decided long ago that no historical change is painless.
Like [the emperor] Augustus, he is at peace with his trade-offs. Between speech
and truth, he chose speech. Between speed and perfection, he chose speed.
Between scale and safety, he chose scale. His life thus far has convinced him
that he can solve ‘problem after problem after problem’, no matter the howling
from the public it may cause.”
People who
have dealt or worked with Zuckerberg come away with different images of him,
but all seem to agree that he’s some kind of hyper-rationalist. When he
encounters a theory that doesn’t accord with his own, says Osnos, who spent
some time with him, “he finds a seam of disagreement – a fact, a methodology, a
premise – and hammers at it. It’s an effective technique for winning arguments,
but one that makes it difficult to introduce new information. Over time, some
former colleagues say, his deputies have begun to filter out bad news from
presentations before it reaches him.”
One of the
great puzzles about Zuckerberg is how such an apparently bright individual can
apparently be so ignorant about how cultures and societies work. In February
2017, for example, he published a 5,500-word manifesto on Building Global
Community. It began: “History is the story of how we’ve learned to come
together in ever greater numbers – from tribes to cities to nations. At each
step, we built social infrastructure like communities, media and governments to
empower us to achieve things we couldn’t on our own.
“Today we
are close to taking our next step. Our greatest opportunities are now global –
like spreading prosperity and freedom, promoting peace and understanding,
lifting people out of poverty, and accelerating science. Our greatest
challenges also need global responses – like ending terrorism, fighting climate
change, and preventing pandemics. Progress now requires humanity coming
together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.”
There’s
lots more in that vacuous vein. The solution to the world’s troubles, it
seemed, was to have everyone in the world as a member of Facebook’s “community”
(a favourite Zuckerberg term). When I showed this essay to a colleague who
teaches politics (and who was hitherto blissfully unaware of Zuckerberg) he
read it with growing incredulity. “If a first-year undergraduate had submitted
this,” he remarked, “I’d have sent him home.” The thought that the CEO of one
of the world’s most powerful corporations could write such piffle seemed
astounding to him.
It is. But
we are where we are. And there is another, contemporary dimension to the
puzzle, namely that the company Zuckerberg controls seems to have the power to
influence people’s behaviour in politically relevant ways. We have empirical
evidence for this. In 2014, for example, a massive experiment on 689,000
Facebook users showed that emotional states can be transferred to others via
emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without
their awareness. And in the 2010 mid-term elections in the US, a campaign by
Facebook to increase voter turnout, carried out by researchers who ran an
experiment involving 61 million users, reckoned that 340,000 extra people
turned out to vote because of a single election-day Facebook message.
In
themselves, these experiments may seem innocuous (though the “emotional
contagion” study raised some ethical concerns). After all, encouraging people
to go out and vote is an admirable thing to do. The real significance of the
experiments, though, was their indication that Facebook had the capacity to
influence people’s behaviour and emotions in ways that could conceivably have a
political impact. Which leads to the question of whether Facebook could, if its
corporate interests required it, put a thumb on the electoral scales in
marginal seats.
Even in the
hyper-polarised world of contemporary US politics, that seems unlikely. But
that hasn’t stopped people scrutinising Zuckerberg’s recent utterances and
behaviour in relation to Trump. When Twitter took the unprecedented step of
labelling some of the president’s more incendiary tweets, and Trump threatened
to revoke the immunity offered to social media platforms by Section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act, who should turn up on the president’s favourite
news channel but Mark Zuckerberg, saying that “private companies shouldn’t be
the arbiters of truth”? And then there were the two visits Zuckerberg paid to
the White House in September and October last year. No smoke without fire, and
all that.
These might
simply be signs of a corporate boss trying to stay out of trouble with the
government of the day. But it still raises an intriguing question: is it
conceivable that Zuckerberg might prefer a Trump victory to a Biden one? The
answer might depend on whom Biden picks as his running mate. If he were to
choose Elizabeth Warren, for example, my guess is that Facebook’s ad-targeting
system and expertise would be at Trump’s disposal, possibly at a discount. Why?
In a leaked recording of an internal Facebook discussion, Zuckerberg described
Warren’s policy proposals on antitrust as “an existential threat” to his company.
And, as General de Gaulle famously observed of nations, tech companies have no
friends, only interests. Zuckerberg understands that as well as anyone. And it
will govern his decisions in the next few months.
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