According to all polling, Trump is going to lose this election. Now, I know Trump supporters are smirking, saying "Yeah. Remember 2016 where polls said Trump was losing? Get ready for that again!"
Certainly, it is possible that Trump is able to once again come from behind and get enough turnout in key states to win as he did in 2016. However, I find that considerably less likely the case this year for several reasons:
1. Hillary Clinton was, and still is, enormously disliked; indeed, the 2016 Campaign was whittled down to the two most disliked people running for President since Gallup started tracking candidate favorability in 1956. Regardless of the repeated smears about Hunter Biden, Joe Biden is well liked and trusted by a majority of the nation, even among many Republicans.
2. Hillary Clinton is a woman, and even in the 21st Century, there is still enough animus toward women in politics that some people who would have voted Democratic either voted for Trump or, more likely, didn't vote at all. This was not the main factor, but was certainly a factor in Trump's win. Biden...has a penis, 'nough said.
3. Trump supporters were smirking in 2018, saying that all the reporting about a "Blue Wave" coming that November was false, and that the "hidden Trump vote" would bring in a "Red Wave" of support for Trump. However, exactly what was predicted happened -- the House went seriously Blue, and the Senate, while still in GOP hands, did not see the gains that had been predicted in 2016, with Dem senators in Red States like Joe Manchin and Jon Tester winning re-election. Further, in 2018, the Democrats made huge gains in state governors and state legislatures. It was indeed a "Blue Wave," and all the polls were right.
4. Trump in 2016 was a political unknown, while Hillary was seen as a tool of the Establishment. Trump was able to hone in white rage, and that was what carried him. Now, Trump and his antics are well known. Certainly his ~30% core base will vote for him no matter what, but many of the people that took a chance on the outside "gasoline bomb" candidate in 2016 seem less likely to be ready to go down that path again.
5. What really cost Hillary and the Democrats the White House in 2016 was not so much the 'yuge' person of Donald Trump, it was the 100 million people that didn't bother to vote. Voting in the United States is usually dismal in any given election cycle, but in 2016 literally 100 million people did not go to vote. Clinton got 65.8 million total votes, Trump won 62.9 million votes, and about 6% of the total vote went to "others" like Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.
Hillary supporters like to say that it was Stein (in particular) and Johnson that cost Hillary the election, saying "well look, at say Michigan! Trump won by 11,000 votes, and 51,000 voted for Stein! That did it!" No it didn't, it was the much larger pool of Democrats not bothering to vote that "did it" to Hillary. According to Pew, 47% of Michigan registered voters are Democrat, compared to 34% Republican, and it was somehow all Jill Stein's fault? Please. Hillary would have stomped Trump in Michigan had her party come out to vote for her en masse. Far more stayed home than voted.
The 2016 malaise does not seem to be the same this year however. As of this writing on October 21, 2020, we find this report from NBC:
"More than 29 million people from 45 states had voted as of Tuesday [October 20, 2020] morning, either by mail or in person. Nearly half of those votes — almost 14.2 million ballots — had come from Democratic-affiliated voters. Republican-affiliated voters had returned almost 10.1 million ballots. And while not every Democrat will vote for former Vice President Joe Biden and not every Republican will vote for President Donald Trump, Democrats have a 14-point edge in returned ballots for which party affiliation is known."
I see no reason to believe that this momentum will shift, and while certainly a lot of Republicans will come out on Election Day to vote Trump, Democrats are very fired up to be rid of Trump, and they are coming out to vote en masse. Why do you think Trump wants to "throw out the ballots?" He knows that if given the chance, Dems will wipe him out this November, so he's planning as much voter suppression as he can muster to keep Democrat votes from counting.
I do not believe that will be enough, and while he will be successful in some level of democratic (small "d") undermining, it will not be enough to tilt the election for him.
Now all that said, this is not any kind of actual "election prediction." I am well aware that there is still a solid pool of support for Trump, support that is just as fired up to see their guy re-elected. I realize that Democrat malaise might strike again. I just don't think so: Trump is a known commodity this time, we have a raging pandemic that he seems to want to put as far on the back burner as possible, and a lot of people in this country are tired of the "Trump Show" and want change. At this point, I really believe it is Biden's to lose....or Trump's to steal if he can figure out how. But we shall see.
