With less than three weeks to go, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are making their final case to Americans for why they should be elected. For Biden, this has involved pitching himself to voters as a competent, compassionate, steady hand who will strap on a hazmat suit and scrub the thick layer of Trump off the nation. For Trump, it’s involved telling voters to drop dead.
Strangely, this approach has not been working out so great for the 45th president. According to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, the former vice president leads the incumbent by a whopping 11 points, 54% to 43%. Trump was able to win in 2016 with just 46% of voters casting a ballot in his favor because states key to the Electoral College backed him. But Biden is ahead in several crucial states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which helped Trump clinch the election four years ago. Not only has Biden maintained an advantage with Black, Latino, and women voters—which might have something to do with the fact that Trump is a flaming racist and misogynist—plus young voters, independents, and people who live in cities and suburbs, he is also leading the president with a heretofore unthinkable collection of individuals: white people.
Yes, Trump, who won white voters by 20 points in 2016, and has spent the last four years saying and doing things that have suggested there was a nonzero chance he might appear at a rally one day wearing a white sheet and burning a cross, is losing to Biden with his favorite demographic:
Additionally, 52% of likely voters view Trump’s presidency as a failure, which is generally not a great thing vis-à-vis winning an election. The bad news for the president comes on the heels of his white-power-embracing, lie-spewing, explosive-diarrhea-of-the-mouth debate performance earlier this month and his COVID-19 diagnosis. And it’s not the only thing the campaign should probably be worried about! On top of the cold, hard data, poll respondents were asked to describe the candidates using one word, and for Trump, the views are a positive sign, unless it’s considered a positive that Americans think he’s a pathetic jackass:
While both candidates were described using a range of positive and negative words—some people called Trump “good” and “strong,” while Biden was additionally called “old” and “confused”—the most cited ones for the president after “incompetent” were “liar” and “failure,” in addition to: arrogant, racist, buffoon, disaster, unqualified, embarrassing, stupid, unprofessional, and monstrous. Ruptured boil on the ass of society was not mentioned but perhaps that’s just because the one-word limit.
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