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Is Donald Trump losing some of his base?

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We’re coming up on a month from the general election and if your get past the headlines?

There IS a continuing sorting of things for Donald Trump around the edges….

Trump is behind in polls in the state he won four years ago….

We KNOW he’s trailing Biden in the national polls as he has since we knew Joe Biden would be the Democratic nominee…

Harry Enten over at CNN now points to some thing many may not believe ….

Donald Trump IS losing pieces of his base…

I KNOW the figure of 90%+ is always throw back at me on the Trump’s base support….

But Enten has his figures that point to some who voted for Obama , and switched to Trump, coming back to Biden….

Trump barely got these white without college degrees ….

But did get enough of them to squeak by in electoral votes….

Again ….

Donald Trump IS losing a month out…

He knows it…

He is just trying to deal with how he can change a loss call…

He’s got 3 debates coming at him starting this coming Tuesday….

The report is he isn’t even boning up for them…

Biden is….

Hmmmm?

Trump is winning by about 21 points among Whites without a college degree in an average of those polls. That may seem like a lot, but remember that Trump led among this group by about 30 points in the final pre-election polls in 2016.
Keep in mind, we’re making an apples-to-apples comparison here. Even if the polls are off by a similar margin as they were in 2016, this exercise takes that into account. There’s real movement going on here among Whites without a college degree.
This 9-point or so shift is even more impressive, when you keep in mind that there’s been a change of less than 4 points overall toward Biden compared to where Hillary Clinton was at the end of 2016.
In other words, there has been a disproportionate shift toward Biden among White voters without a college degree.
These voters make up the majority of voters in key Rust Belt (Great Lake) battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All of these were states Trump won by less than a point in 2016.
How the candidates are preparing for the first debate
Not surprisingly, Biden’s position in these states has significantly improved from where Clinton ended up. He’s got a 5- to 7-point advantages in all of these states.
We see similar big shifts toward Biden compared to Clinton in other key states in the region: Iowa and Ohio. Biden’s about even in Iowa and slightly ahead in Ohio, despite Clinton losing them by 9 and 8 points respectively. Again, both states have a lot of White voters without a college degree.
The shift toward Biden in these states is larger than the shift in some other close states that Trump barely won in 2016. Biden isn’t doing nearly as well as Florida or North Carolina, where White voters without a college degree are less than a majority of the electorate.
Indeed, Arizona is the only state of the six closest won by Trump in 2016 that doesn’t fit this pattern. Whites without a college degree don’t make up a majority of voters in Arizona. Yet Biden has about a 3- or 4- point lead there, even as Clinton lost the state by 4 points.
That discrepancy can easily be explained by the fact that Democrats have also seen big gains among Whites with a college degree nationally (specifically suburban) as well…..

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  1. You’re confused.

    My point has always been that Trump was getting 90+% support from self identified “Republicans.”

    Most of the people Enten is talking about are switch hitters who sometimes support Democrats and sometimes Republicans but have lately been “leaning Republican.”

    Few of these people would call themselves “Republicans.”

    And they wouldn’t be included in the 90+% .

  2. I would add that if Trump is suffering a one third diminution in his support among non college educated Whites as Enten suggests?

    Then it’s almost impossible for him to win ,unless one assumes that a lot of people who didn’t vote in 2016 are going to vote this time just to vote for Trump ,or that a lot of Hillary voters from 2016 are switching to Trump.

    I’m neither supporting nor rejecting Entens observation,just stating the logical surmise as to the result ,if his observation is correct ,or what Trump would need to make up for this loss of support ,if he were to have a chance at re-election.

  3. Enten also says Trump is doing better with conservatives–but far worse with moderates and liberals–than he was in 2016.

  4. While most of the attention is on mail in voting, there has been little attention to in person voting on Election Day itself.

    There should be more.

    Already concern is being expressed in many states about having enough poll workers and there are moves to combine voting precincts .The result is sure to be confusion galore, probably the longest lines in history if the turnout is large and people still voting hours after the polls officially close.

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