Trump pollster's campaign autopsy paints damning
picture of defeat
The 27-page report pins Trump's loss on voter
perception that he was untrustworthy and disapproval of his pandemic
performance.
By ALEX
ISENSTADT
02/01/2021
08:46 PM EST
Former
President Donald Trump has blamed the election results on unfounded claims of
fraud and malfeasance. But at the top levels of his campaign, a detailed autopsy
report that circulated among his political aides paints a far different — and
more critical — portrait of what led to his defeat.
The
post-mortem, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, says the former
president suffered from voter perception that he wasn’t honest or trustworthy
and that he was crushed by disapproval of his handling of the coronavirus
pandemic. And while Trump spread baseless accusations of ballot-stuffing in
heavily Black cities, the report notes that he was done in by hemorrhaging
support from white voters.
The 27-page
report, which was written by Trump chief pollster Tony Fabrizio, shows how
Trump advisers were privately reckoning with his loss even as the former
president and many of his supporters engaged in a conspiracy theory-fueled
effort to overturn the election. The autopsy was completed in December 2020 and
distributed to Trump’s top political advisers just before President Joe Biden’s
Jan. 20 inauguration.
It is
unclear if Trump has seen the report.
The
findings are based on an analysis of exit polling in 10 states. Five of them —
Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — are states that Trump
lost after winning them in 2016. The other five — Florida, Iowa, North
Carolina, Ohio and Texas — are states that Trump won in both elections.
The report
zeroes in on an array of demographics where Trump suffered decisive reversals
in 2020, including among white seniors, the same group that helped to propel
him to the White House. The autopsy says that Trump saw the “greatest erosion
with white voters, particularly white men,” and that he “lost ground with
almost every age group.” In the five states that flipped to Biden, Trump’s
biggest drop-off was among voters aged 18-29 and 65 and older.
Suburbanites
— who bolted from Trump after 2016 — also played a major role. The report says
that the former president suffered a “double-digit erosion” with “White College
educated voters across the board.”
The picture
of the election presented in the report is widely shared by political
professionals in both parties, if not by Trump and his legions of his
supporters. Trump never offered a concession to Biden, and up until his final
days in office, he clung to the debunked idea that the election had been
stolen.
Fabrizio declined
to comment on the post-mortem. A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a
request for comment.
Trump’s
personal behavior, the autopsy makes clear, contributed to his defeat. “Biden
had a clear edge over POTUS on being seen as honest & trustworthy,”
Fabrizio writes.
Trump’s
response to the pandemic was also critical. The autopsy says that coronavirus
registered as the top issue among voters, and that Biden won those voters by a
nearly 3-to-1 margin. A majority registered disapproval of Trump’s handling of
the virus.
Most voters
said they prioritized battling the coronavirus over reopening the economy, even
as the president put a firm emphasis on the latter. And roughly 75 percent of
voters — most of whom favored Biden — said they favored public mask-wearing
mandates.
The report
also indirectly raises questions about the reelection campaign’s decision to
pause advertising on TV over the summer and save resources until the fall.
According to the findings, nearly 9-in-10 voters had made up their minds about
whom to support by the final month of the race.
Fabrizio
isn’t the only Trump adviser who has presented a post-mortem since Nov. 3. John
McLaughlin, another Trump pollster, published a report on the conservative
Newsmax website the week after the election.
Meanwhile,
advisers to former Vice President Mike Pence brought in multiple pollsters to
brief him on their conclusions after the election, according to a person
familiar with the discussions. Among the takeaways was that Trump was gaining
during the final weeks of the race and that his rallies had helped propel
Republicans running in House and Senate races. But the pollsters also made
clear that while there was substantial support for Trump’s policies, there was
widespread exhaustion with the president.
Within
Trump’s inner circle, Fabrizio had long espoused the belief that Trump needed
to prioritize the pandemic in order to win reelection. Last summer, he penned a
79-page memo arguing that Trump needed to focus first on dealing with the
pandemic rather than reopening the economy and recommending, among other
things, that he should have been encouraging people to wear masks rather than
mocking the practice.
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