re: #213 PrairieQueen

Is it just me, or am I fairly certain that by election time Trump’s lies about COVID-19, the lack of oversight on emergency fund spending, removing whistleblowers, his impeachment - that his nanny Fox News’ revisionist history will secure that POS another term as POTUS?

I’m just not as optimistic this will be his undoing by November. I suspect he’ll be a superstar again in the eyes of his cult followers, and I don’t know that Biden is going to be able to maximize on shit that happened several months before the election; it won’t be the shiny thing any longer.

He’s going to get 40% of the national popular vote; Biden is going to get 40%. That’s simply the floor in a two person race. The question is the remaining 20%. I seriously doubt we’re going to see nearly 6% voting for a third party candidate (for the record, that’s the highest third party vote since 1996). It’ll probably be closer to the traditional 1-2%. So, that leaves about 18-19% of the electorate potentially “up for grabs.” We also know that incumbent presidents end up with a percentage of the vote fairly close to their approval rating at election time.

Trump’s approval rating has spiked a bit (but seems to be dropping off already) due to the pandemic (rally around the flag, I suspect). But he’s been pretty consistently in the low 40s for much of the last two years - and before the midterms was under 40%.

I think he’s as close to an underdog any incumbent has been since at least Carter.