#BEonPolls: 2020 is Still Very Uncertain
Trump is still formidable next year, just check Louisiana and his job approvals ...
a #BEonPolls Feature
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While it’s a relatively red Southern state that Trump won handily in 2016, Louisiana is a state Democrats should pay attention to. The current Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards was forced into a future runoff by a “Trump effect” that shouldn’t have happened had Democrats imagined beyond typical playbooks and looked to mobilize the state’s massive Black voting base. Yet, the president was able to turn out more voters on Saturday night in what was an indication of a 2020 dress rehearsal. From The Advocate …
President Donald Trump loomed large over Louisiana’s governor’s race a day after Gov. John Bel Edwards fell short of winning Saturday’s primary outright, forcing him to face businessman Eddie Rispone in next month’s runoff.
Edwards and many of his biggest supporters thought he would win re-election Saturday night by taking at least 50% of the vote.
But Edwards, the only Democratic governor in the Deep South, was held to 46.6%, while Rispone won a spot in the runoff with 27.4%. U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham finished third with 23.6%, out of the money, and he promptly endorsed Rispone, a fellow Republican.
Miles Coleman, an LSU grad who is associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nationally-respected political newsletter and website at the University of Virginia, rated the Nov. 16 runoff a “tossup.”
Political analysts on Sunday said Trump’s late entrance into the race spelled the difference on Saturday.
About 200,000 more people voted in the primary compared to the 2015 runoff election that Edwards won, an increase of about 17%. An analysis on Sunday by Jim Kitchens, who was the governor’s pollster four years ago and was an independent consultant for his campaign this year, indicated that most of the 200,000 were white rural voters who voted for Rispone or Abraham.
Meanwhile, from Axios, a focus group of swing voters in Ohio suggests Democrats could be over-playing their impeachment hand. Or, are they really? Is “impeachment as distraction” in 2020 the same thing as “Hillary’s emails and Kaepernick’s knee” in 2016 - basically, just another excuse for White voters to feel less guilty about voting for Trump …
It’s important to keep understanding Trump’s approval ratings and the fact that, as bad as the headlines might be, he’s still solidly maintaining 40 percent approvals. Which means his base is solid and that Democrats need to give up on the fool’s gold errand of trying to convert Trump voters. As Civiqs shows, we haven’t seen him drop below 40 percent in job approval in over a year …
Most White people still think he’s doing a good job …
FiveThirtyEight pretty much shows the same …
Here’s RealClearPolitics …
Get back to us when he’s dropped below 35 percent in approval ratings - and done so consistently for a long stretch of months.