POLITICO Election Forecast: Trump running out of time to turn around 2020 campaign // Trump's lost summer: Focused on Fox News, not on battleground states

 

2020 ELECTIONS

POLITICO Election Forecast: Trump running out of time to turn around 2020 campaign

 

The presidential race is still leaning toward Joe Biden, while the battle for control of the Senate is a toss up.

 

President Donald Trump, who didn’t get the election-changing convention bounce he hoped for, still trails Joe Biden by a significant margin among voters nationally.

 

By STEVEN SHEPARD

09/09/2020 04:30 AM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/09/2020-election-forecast-410377

 

The door isn’t closed on President Donald Trump’s reelection, but time is running short.

 

Labor Day once marked the start of concerted general-election campaigning, but it comes with a far greater sense of urgency this year for Trump. Because of coronavirus-related changes in election administration across the country, more Americans than ever are expected to cast their ballots early this year, whether by mail or in person.

 

And Trump, who didn’t get the election-changing convention bounce he hoped for, still trails Joe Biden by a significant margin among voters nationally — and by varying, but mostly smaller, gaps in many of the key battleground states. The latest updates to POLITICO’s Election Forecast point to a relatively stable political environment, and that's not what the president needs.

 

 

Even as turbulence pervades the news around politics, Biden is still staked to a lead and favored to win the presidency, as more than half a million absentee ballots were dropped in the mail last week in North Carolina and Minnesota prepares to open in-person early voting at the end of next week. Biden's edge is not overwhelming, though, given Trump’s advantages in the Electoral College.

 

Meanwhile, the battle for the Senate is as tight as ever, with both parties fighting over a handful of hotly contested seats that will tilt what is likely to be a narrow majority for either side, even as Democrats could strengthen their already tight grasp on the House.

 

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s edge comes from two states Trump carried in 2016, Michigan and Pennsylvania. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo

 

Biden remains the favorite to be sworn in as the nation’s 46th president next January, but the swing-state battlefield is still up for grabs. There are still enough electoral votes in the four states rated as toss-ups — Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin — to tilt the race one way or the other.

 

But Biden’s edge comes from two states Trump carried in 2016, Michigan and Pennsylvania, leaning towards him along with other traditional battlegrounds, like Nevada and New Hampshire, which Hillary Clinton won. Minnesota also remains in the “Lean Democratic” category, though both campaigns are playing heavily there. Polls also show tight races in states like Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas, but those states are still leaning in Trump’s column — for now.

 

Two long-time battleground states, Colorado and Virginia, are almost entirely off the board for Trump. He is barely contesting the combined 22 electoral votes from both states, while Biden has booked a nominal amount of TV advertising for the final stretch just to be safe. Colorado and Virginia have moved from “Lean Democratic” to “Likely Democratic.”

 

And while polls currently point to a Biden victory that would be short of a landslide — Biden’s lead is slightly smaller than it was two months ago, when the forecast was last updated — a bigger Biden win that would expand the electoral map is still possible. Alaska and Montana, two Republican-leaning, idiosyncratic states, moved from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican,” as public and private polling shows the president underperforming his 2016 margins there.

 

Republicans are confident Sen. Susan Collins’ independent image with Mainers isn’t a thing of the past, allowing her to win a fifth term. | Al-Drago-Pool/Getty Images

 

Control of the Senate remains firmly up for grabs. Republicans currently hold 53 seats, plus the vice presidency.

 

If Biden and Kamala Harris win the November election, Democrats would have to flip a net of three seats to wrest away the gavel from Republicans. The GOP can pad its majority by an additional seat by ousting Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama; Jones’ race has been rated “Lean Republican” since the forecast debuted late last year.

 

Defeat in Alabama would put Democrats four seats away from the majority, but two GOP-held seats are now leaning in their direction. Colorado has joined Arizona in the “Lean Democratic” category: Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, the Democratic nominee, is consistently ahead of first-term GOP Sen. Cory Gardner, who is being weighed down by the president’s poor poll numbers in the increasingly blue state.

 

There are four toss-up races, all currently held by Republicans — Iowa, Maine, Montana and North Carolina — and the party that wins the majority of them should control the chamber next year. Of the four, North Carolina is the most promising for Democrats, as the party’s nominee, Cal Cunningham, is leading GOP Sen. Thom Tillis in most polls.

 

In Maine, Democratic state House Speaker Sara Gideon has a narrow lead in public polling averages over long-time GOP Sen. Susan Collins, though Republicans are confident Collins’ independent image with Mainers isn’t a thing of the past, allowing her to win a fifth term. Iowa and Montana are considered a little stronger for Republicans, though Democrats are investing heavily in both races.

 

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After that, Democrats have other options in races currently rated as “Lean Republican,” though they must overcome GOP advantages with less than two months to go. The two seats up in Georgia, where GOP Sen. David Perdue is sharing the ballot with a special election for the other seat, could end up in January runoffs if no candidate wins a majority in either race. Democratic candidates have struggled historically in those post-election runoffs, which Democrats criticize as vestiges of Jim Crow-era election rules in Southern states.

 

Joining the list of “Lean Republican” states are Kansas and South Carolina. In Kansas, the top national GOP super PAC is spending more than $5 million over the next four weeks to prop up the party’s candidate, GOP Rep. Roger Marshall, against state Sen. Barbara Bollier, a Republican-turned-Democrat who has excelled at fundraising. National Democrats haven’t fully engaged here, though perhaps they would have if the controversial Kris Kobach had won last month’s GOP primary. As it stands, the Democratic Party has remained focused strictly on the core battleground.

 

Similarly, neither party has dipped into South Carolina — but that’s because they don’t have to. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democrat Jaime Harrison have been two of their parties’ best fundraisers and won’t require any kind of outside intervention. Polls show Graham only narrowly ahead of Harrison, warranting a move to “Lean Republican.”

 

Meanwhile, Republicans aren’t content with Alabama as their only offensive opportunity. They are mounting a renewed charge to put Michigan — where first-term Democratic Sen. Gary Peters faces GOP repeat candidate John James — at the center of the map. But Peters still retains an advantage, keeping the race in “Lean Democratic.”

 

The Democrat-controlled House, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is on the cusp of getting the seats it needs to win a majority. | Gabriella Demczuk/Getty Images

 

Democrats have fortified their House majority, benefiting from both from a national environment that resembles the 2018 midterm wave and strong fundraising from battleground incumbents in their 233-seat caucus.

 

In the current forecast, 217 seats are currently rated as “Solid,” “Likely” or “Lean Democratic” — right on the cusp of the 218 needed to win a majority.

 

Of the 26 seats moving in the latest forecast, 23 of them are towards Democrats. The list includes three House Democratic freshmen whose reelection bids moved from “Toss Up” races into the “Lean Democratic” category: Reps. Gil Cisneros in Orange County, Calif.; Lucy McBath in suburban Atlanta; and Elissa Slotkin in Michigan.

 

Meanwhile, six GOP-held seats moved from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up”: Rep. David Schweikert’s seat near Phoenix; an open seat in the Indianapolis suburbs; Rep. Don Bacon’s Omaha, Neb.-based seat; party-switching Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s South Jersey district; an open seat on the South Shore of Long Island; and Rep. John Katko’s competitive seat near Syracuse, N.Y.

 

There are some bright spots for Republicans: Freshman Democratic Rep. Debbie Murcasel-Powell’s South Florida district and an open seat in Southeast Iowa moved from “Lean Democratic” to “Toss Up,” as both parties see close races in those places. Trump carried the Iowa district, which is being vacated by retiring Rep. Dave Loebsack. Murcasel-Powell’s district went heavily for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but Trump’s improving numbers in South Florida have improved the party’s outlook here, as has the strong Republican recruit, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez.

 

Despite Roy Cooper’s high approval ratings in North Carolina on his handling of the coronavirus, his Republican opponent has been a harsh critic of the governor’s containment policies. | Robert Willett/The News & Observer via AP

 

The biggest prize of the 2020 gubernatorial landscape remains North Carolina, where despite tight races for president and Senate, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper remains ahead of his GOP challenger, Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.

 

Despite Cooper’s high approval ratings on his handling of the coronavirus — 65 percent of voters said he was doing a good job in a Monmouth University poll last week, compared to 31 percent who said he was doing a bad job — Forest has been a harsh critic of the governor’s containment policies, calling them too restrictive. In a new ad that began airing this week, Forest pledged to open schools in the state, which are either conducting remote instruction, or a hybrid with some in-person attendance.

 

Forest’s strategy isn’t redounding to his benefit at the moment: He was trailing Cooper by roughly 10 points in the Monmouth poll.

 

Elsewhere, the most hotly contested races — based on where the parties are investing their resources — are in Missouri and Montana, with both currently rated as “Lean Republican.” In Missouri, Democrats are hopeful that state Auditor Nicole Galloway can unseat GOP Gov. Mike Parson.

 

Democrats are defending the governor’s mansion in Montana, with Gov. Steve Bullock term-limited and running for Senate. Republicans nominated the man Bullock defeated in 2016, now-Rep. Greg Gianforte, while the Democratic candidate is Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney. Bullock, Cooney and Democratic congressional nominee Kathleen Williams are all seeking to overcome that state’s GOP orientation at the presidential level, even though Trump is underperforming his 2016 numbers at present.

 

One state where Republicans are in a stronger position: Vermont. Despite the state’s bright-blue presidential outlook, GOP Gov. Phil Scott is well-positioned to win a third two-year term against Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, a member of the Progressive Party who won the Democratic primary this summer. The race moved from “Lean Republican” to “Likely Republican.”

2020 ELECTION

 

Trump's lost summer: Focused on Fox News, not on battleground states

 

An analysis of his campaign's TV spending reveals that the president has sacrificed targeting swing-state voters in favor of his favorite station.

 

President Donald Trump’s summer spending on national Fox News ads illustrated a strategy focused on the Trump base even as the campaign has talked about targeting swing-voting suburbanites. |

 

By SCOTT BLAND and ELENA SCHNEIDER

09/09/2020 04:30 AM EDT

 

President Donald Trump spent the summer trailing in national polls, losing in swing states and bleeding suburban voters to Joe Biden. His campaign response: doubling down on his base, via his favorite TV channel, Fox News.

 

While the Trump campaign chopped its TV spending throughout the summer, even going dark on the airwaves on multiple occasions, the campaign maintained a heavy presence on Fox. According to Advertising Analytics, an ad-tracking firm, the Trump campaign spent more money on national ads on Fox News in June, July and August ($9.4 million) than it spent on local broadcast TV in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin ($8.3 million). Trump spent an additional $9.7 million advertising in Pennsylvania, another key state he flipped in 2016, over the same time period.

 

The focus on Fox has alarmed some Republican strategists who think the campaign has missed an opportunity to spread its message to battleground-state swing voters, who are getting a steady dose of Joe Biden ads. Biden spent $35.3 million on TV in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over the past three months, per Advertising Analytics, though the Democratic nominee only just started advertising in Minnesota.

 

“I’d be shocked if you don’t see the [Trump] campaign, in these bigger battleground states, doing some level of female demographic messaging in suburban-urban areas, where college-educated women have become such a problem. I think you’re going to see it, but you haven’t seen it so far,” said Nick Everhart, a Republican media consultant.

 

“So far, it’s all been 20,000-foot, feed red meat to the base … messaging. The Trump campaign has always made driving a narrative to the base a top priority,” Everhart said. “At the end of the day, you can’t build a house if you don’t have a solid foundation, and politically, the GOP base is that foundation for the president.”

 

Overall, Trump’s summer spending on national Fox News ads — more than 10 percent of the campaign’s total TV budget during that time, and more than the rest of its cable advertising combined — illustrated a strategy focused on the Trump base even as the campaign has talked about targeting swing-voting suburbanites, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen advertising experts and Republican strategists. It reflects Trump’s impulse to focus on friendly groups instead of those who may not have supported him in 2016. And the ad strategy raises additional doubts about whether the free-spending Trump campaign has made efficient use of the hundreds of millions of dollars it raised over the past four years.

 

Another Republican media strategist questioned the campaign’s approach. The person said Trump needs a bigger presence on entertainment channels in order to capture non-news-watching voters. "News channels are big in Washington, D.C., but are swing voters ... watching news channels?” the strategist said. “To miss out on that audience is pretty large.”

 

Some note that there are reasons for Trump to maintain a significant presence on Fox News, including spurring donations to the campaign and keeping his base — Trump’s political touchstone — solidly behind him. With the biggest audience on cable, Fox does attract some independent voters in battleground states. And Trump’s digital operation is spending unprecedented sums advertising on online platforms like YouTube, which are becoming a more powerful force for reaching swing voters.

 

“The data shows that a lot of independents watch Fox News, so the first thing I always do is max out on Fox News,” said Brad Todd, a Republican media consultant. Todd also noted that during the coronavirus pandemic, “a lot of the current entertainment programming is re-runs.”

 

“Fox News programming is fresh,” Todd said. “Live sports is way down, so the freshest content is on news channels right now.”

 

But paired with the campaign's on-again, off-again swing-state TV advertising, the expense on national Fox News ads means heavier reliance on outside groups — including America First Action, the pro-Trump super PAC — to provide some cover for the campaign’s less diversified TV strategy. Pro-Biden groups spent $156 million on TV compared to $136 million by pro-Trump groups in June, July and August, according to Advertising Analytics.

 

"The Trump campaign has been in key states across the country for years connecting directly with voters about the successes of President Trump’s America First agenda, and we’ll continue to spread that message and inform the American people about Joe Biden’s destructive, socialist agenda both on the ground and on the airwaves," Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager said in a statement.

 

In August, the Trump campaign said it paused TV spending to review its strategy, after Bill Stepien took over for Brad Parscale as campaign manager. Last month, Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said the campaign was “conserving money right now and focusing a little bit more smartly and a little more effectively on the states that are voting early.”

 

Now, both Biden and Trump, as well as supportive outside groups, are laying down millions of dollars in new TV buys as Labor Day marks the turn to the fall campaign season. Biden has booked $156 million more (and counting) in ads between now and Election Day, while Trump has $151 million reserved so far. The two campaigns are matched nearly dollar for dollar in broadcast TV ads across a slate of swing states.

 

 

 

The GOP polling firm Public Opinion Strategies wrote in 2019 that more than half of Fox News’ audience self-identified as Republican or conservative. People who use Fox News as their main news source were three times more likely than the average American adult to say that Trump’s coronavirus response was excellent, the Pew Research Center found earlier this year. And while Trump’s approval rating in a May 2019 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll stood at 46 percent, the president’s rating was 73 percent among Fox News viewers.

 

The Trump campaign “keeps talking about their intensity level with their base, but they’re clearly paying for it,” said another Republican strategist, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. “To what degree are they paying for that intensity level to the detriment of a swing audience?”

 

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The Biden campaign’s cable advertising has been more diverse. He spent $2.3 million on national CNN buys and $1.8 million on Fox News over the last three months, according to Advertising Analytics. But more than two-thirds of the Democratic nominee’s cable buys have been targeted to local markets, whereas Biden’s campaign is running specific ads hitting local issues or certain segments of the population.

 

“The Biden campaign is running an Obama 2012-type campaign, utilizing hyper-targeted messaging runs on cable, drilling down to specific states and regions, versus running message progressions at a macro-level,” Everhart said.

 

Examples of the strategy include ads in Ohio and North Carolina, employment hubs for Goodyear, after Trump condemned the company over its diversity training. Biden ads on seniors handling the coronavirus pandemic have run specifically in Florida, including in the Villages, the massive retirement community.

 

After the 2012 campaign, analysts took note of the Obama campaign’s cable strategy and predicted it would be a must-have feature of future campaigns. But Trump has spent little on local cable — less than 10 percent of the $18.3 million his campaign spent on cable in June, July and August. And a chunk of what Trump has spent on local cable aired in Washington, D.C., far from voters in the most important 2020 swing states.

 

The Trump campaign may be relying on its digital advertising to do the work of specifically targeting key battleground state voters. Trump’s campaign is spending far more than Biden online, and the strategy would partially mimic the president’s 2016 campaign, when he was outspent on TV but made up for it with non-stop coverage from the news media and a robust digital advertising campaign.

 

“Their strategy on digital is diversified, and they’re going after all the audiences they need, including suburban women, younger voters, independents,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist. “They’re certainly doing a lot of list building. But a lot of persuasion work is going to important audiences, too."