The Daily - ‘Send Her Back’: White Voters and Trump’s Path to Re-election

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

The majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump. But in 2020, Democrats will still have a hard time defeating him. Here’s why. Guest: Nate Cohn, who covers elections, polling and demographics for The Upshot at The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: President Trump’s edge in the Electoral College may leave him closer to re-election than one might think based on his approval ratings — and may also blunt the electoral cost of actions like his attacks against four congresswomen of color.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump. Nate Cohn on why, in 2020, Democrats will still have such a hard time defeating him. Democrats will still have such a hard time defeating him. It's Wednesday, July 24th. Nate, I've noticed on Twitter that people are kind of mad at you,

and it's only July of 2019. They are. They are. I think you should consider pacing yourself. I should consider what? Pacing yourself. Oh, pacing myself. Yeah, that would probably be best for my mental health. Give us, Nate, the top-line summary of what you reported last week,

the thing that riled up a few people. So basically the president's approval ratings are underwater nationwide, which means that there are more people who disapprove of the president than who approve of him. But despite that, the president is better positioned to win reelection than the national polls suggest, because he is stronger in critical battleground states than he is nationwide. And in fact, his position in the battleground states with respect to the country is even better than it was in 2016 when he was able to win the presidency while losing the national vote by two points. So it allows for the possibility that the president could win the electoral college and therefore the presidency while losing the national vote by an even wider margin than he did in 2016. How exactly does that work? It works because of the Electoral College.

And in most states, Electoral College votes are awarded on a winner-take-all basis. So what that means is that if the president can barely hold on to a bunch of states, he gets the same number of Electoral College votes as he would if he had won them by a lot. So despite the fact that the president's approval ratings are quite low, there is not only a clear potential path to reelection for him, he could actually do better than he did in 2016. And that's because of voters in certain states with a lot of electoral college votes. I think the way I would frame it is not that he could do better than 2016. I mean, he could. I

mean, he could do better or worse. But he would have a better chance to win at a greater deficit in the popular vote. It would be a potentially more confounding style of victory. Potentially, yeah. Now I can see why people are mad. I can understand, too. And, you know, it's particularly frustrating, I think, for some people because, you know, the president's approval ratings are bad in the critical states like Wisconsin or in Florida or in Pennsylvania.

So I'm not trying to say that the president is especially well positioned to win reelection or something. I'm pretty agnostic on whether he's a favorite or not. But he has this important advantage in the Electoral College that gives him a better shot to win than you would think. Got it. You're just looking at the numbers. Just looking at the numbers. Just looking at the numbers. Okay, so let's get into this because it does feel kind of complicated. Okay.

You keep talking about the president's approval ratings. Why are you looking at those? How do those help you come to this conclusion about his chances in 2020? So the president's approval rating is the best measure of his standing by state. And historically, it's a good proxy for how people ultimately vote in the general election. And what the data shows when you break it down by state is that the president is holding up relatively well in several states in the Rust Belt.

up relatively well in several states in the Rust Belt. States like Minnesota and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, traditionally white working class battleground states. Those are states that Democrats used to be able to count on in presidential elections. Trump won several of those states and was much better than prior Republican candidates. And as a result, he was able to flip them and won the presidency. And although he's lost a lot of ground in Sunbelt states like Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Florida, that are traditionally quite Republican, he hasn't lost so much ground there that they represent a great option for Democrats instead. The Sunbelt has not emerged as a great alternative to Democrats if they can't hold the Rust Belt states. And that leaves the traditional white working class battleground states at the center of the electoral map and where the president has a relative advantage

compared to the country. Okay, so let's focus on the Rust Belt. Which states are you focused on right now where the president could pull off this electoral college victory despite a popular vote loss? I think Wisconsin is at the center of things. One way to look at it is that in 2016, it was what we call the tipping point state of the election. Which means what? It means that if Hillary Clinton had won every state that's more democratic than Wisconsin, that Wisconsin then would have been the critical state

to decide the election and would have put her over the top. In our analysis, it still holds that distinction. If the president wins every state where his approval rating is better than Wisconsin, his reelection would then come down to winning that state and that state alone. In our analysis, the president's approval rating in Wisconsin is probably above 47%. The good news for Democrats, which is that that's under 50. The bad news is that that is appreciably better than the president's approval rating nationwide. And it's not that far away from what the president would need to win.

So who are these Wisconsin voters who may very well determine the outcome of the election? What can you tell us about them? I think the most important observation about them is that they are white and they are likelier to be working class. Likelier than the rest of them? Likelier than the country. So overall, white working class voters are about half of the electorate in Wisconsin. They're about 40% nationwide. So that's a real disadvantage for Democrats. And there are very few of, you know, the sort of populations that are helping Democrats more and more, like a growing Hispanic population or something. So if the president wins Wisconsin,

he's a very clear favorite to win. There are ways around that, but it's a simple and reasonable way to look at it at this point. And I think that there are two halves to a strategy. One is to hold the white working class voters who voted for him last time. There is evidence that some of these voters have soured on him, but this is the president's relative strength is winning, you know, working class whites. He's got a playbook for doing it with immigration, etc. And then the other half of his playbook is to at least hold the Milwaukee suburbs and potentially even gain there. This is a conservative region. This is a place where Mitt Romney won by 30 points.

This is Scott Walker country. This is where Paul Ryan represents. And these sort of establishment Republicans were not happy with the president's campaign in 2016. I think a lot of them were relatively unlikely to turn out, vote for a third party, in some cases, perhaps even cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton. But they're conservative, and they've probably watched President Trump govern as a conservative in the sort of ways that they like there. They've seen him appoint conservative justices. They've seen him cut taxes. They've seen him try and repeal Obamacare. In large parts of the country, this doesn't help him very much. But in a true Republican area, maybe it actually works

to his advantage and helps him bring back some of the people who were never along with him in the first place. So you're saying that Trump could win by winning these white working class voters and more educated white voters in Wisconsin. And in fact, it's looking like he may very well do both. Right. If he checks both boxes on white working class and Milwaukee, he's in. We'll be right back. So, Nate, one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you is because of these tweets that President Trump sent last week

about the four progressive congresswomen telling them to go back to the countries from which they came. I watched that and asked myself, how is that not a bad idea? It looks like a very bad idea. I understand in 2016 that that kind of messaging worked, but I thought one of the big lessons of the 2018 midterms was that once that kind of messaging became the way the president actually governed for two

years, some of his voters said, I don't really want that. And they voted for Democrats in Congress and the House flipped to Democrats. So the reason I want to talk to you is because I'm trying to make sense of how it could possibly be a good idea for the president to double down on that inflammatory strategy again, heading into 2020. If we've learned that it can cost the president key votes that got him elected in 2016 and that got Democrats elected in 2018. You know, these white working class voters that we've been talking about,

not necessarily the ones in Milwaukee, to be sure, but the white working class ones, part of the reason why they broke for the president in the first place in 2016 was because of his pitch on cultural issues. They are against immigration. They support a border wall. They like guns. They think we should get tough on China. There's a lot of his playbook that they really do buy into, even though they have traditionally been Democratic voters. But I wouldn't argue that

the president is necessarily doing himself any favors with his particular tactics right here. I mean, these tweets may not be productive at all. I guess I would analogize it more to like being a bad version of maybe a good strategy, like trying to polarize the electorate along racial lines does help the president in a white state like Wisconsin. This particular way of doing it may not work out for him. It'd be like if I told you that for a football team to win, they need to pass the football more. And then like this might have been an interception. But in general, this idea that the president should be throwing the ball down the field may be what he needs to do to win over the long run.

But it seems like the president's strategy, even if it was a better version, in your words, could end up alienating those more educated voters in a place like Milwaukee, which you said he needs to win to get the state. So it still confuses me a little bit. That's right. There's a real downside arrest for the president with the sort of approach that he's taken here. I think that, you know, there's a version of President Trump who could have 55 percent approval rating right now by riding the economy. That's not the version that we have right now, to be sure. Because of tweets like this. Because of tweets like this. Now, I'd point out that despite all of the president's tweets and conduct over the last year, the president's approval rating in Milwaukee is not that bad.

It's basically the same as his standing was in 2016. He hasn't lost much ground there. So this is not inherently a losing approach in a key state like Wisconsin. Yeah. The general strategy of trying to exploit the racial and educational divide in the country is one that tends to help his chances. So then what should the Democrats take from all this? Is it that they need to do whatever they can to win over these white voters in a place like Wisconsin or something else?

If you're just looking at where the president is positioned, the path of least resistance for Democrats is to win Wisconsin. They could try and do it another way. They could try and win through Arizona. They could try and win through Texas. But those are states where, as of today, more people like the president than Wisconsin. So, you know, if you're a Democrat who wants to take the path that Trump has given them, it's to figure out how to win Wisconsin. Is that another way of saying how to win white voters in Wisconsin? who probably voted for Obama, maybe voted for Democrats all the time over the last two decades, but voted for President Trump in 2016 and now appear to disapprove of his performance. I mean, you could also increase black turnout. I would note for what it's worth that,

you know, the black share of the electorate in Wisconsin is relatively small. It's, I think it was 4% of the electorate last time. Could you increase that to five and get a point out of it if you're a Democrat? Yeah, you could. But in comparison to the state as a whole, it's not the necessarily decisive factor in anything other than the closest election. Nate, I guess I'm having a little bit of a hard time understanding why there aren't enough of the Obama voters to carry a Democrat in 2020 over the edge. What am I missing about the way voters are distributed and the Electoral College works? Well, the Obama coalition depended a lot more on white working class voters than people give it credit for. I mean, there's this idea that the Obama vote was, you know,

a bunch of young people and a bunch of progressives and a bunch of black voters who, in some cases, had not previously been engaged in politics. That's not what happened. I mean, in Wisconsin, Obama would have won the state without a single vote in the city of Milwaukee. You could have just severed it away and cast it into, like, Michigan, and he would have won Wisconsin. You could have done the same thing in Michigan with the city of Detroit. Ohio, the whole city of Cleveland could have gone into Lake Erie.

Because he won so many white voters. Because he did that well among white working-class voters. Hmm. In 2016, a huge number of those voters defected. By our estimates, about 25% of the white working class voters who supported President Obama in the Midwest did not vote for Hillary Clinton. They voted for a third party candidate or Donald Trump. And I would note that when you flip a voter, it is twice as important as when you turn a new voter out. Because you take someone away from your side and add one to the other rather than just adding one to your side when you turn a new voter out because you take someone away from your side and add one to the other

rather than just adding one to your side when you turn out someone new. So the effect of that has sort of fundamentally changed the calculation for what kinds of things you need to do as a Democrat to win in states that used to be Democratic. You have to have the right kind of Democratic nominee who can appeal to the kind of voter

that you're saying is up for grabs in Wisconsin right now and went for Obama in 2008. Right. That would very much seem to support the idea of a Joe Biden candidacy or someone like a Joe Biden who's promising to win back disaffected white voters rather than a more progressive candidate

who might alienate those voters. Yeah, I mean, leaving the specifics of Joe Biden aside, I think that if you're looking at the approval ratings and where the clearest Democratic opportunity runs, it seems to go through white working class voters in the Midwest, and the president will attempt to appeal to them through immigration and cultural issues. So if you're a Democrat, I think it would be natural to ask

what kind of candidate will block the president from using immigration and cultural issues to reunite some of his support among white working class voters in the Midwest. Well, given the number of strong progressive candidates in this race, is there another approach these candidates have in mind to look past the white voter in the Midwest

and go after a broader, more diverse set of voters? Is there another electoral map that could be assembled here? I think that that's totally possible. I mean, I want to be clear that the president's approval ratings are well underwater nationwide, and they're quite competitive in a number of states besides the ones we're talking about. The president's approval rating is around 50% in Florida. It's around 50% in North Carolina. It's around 50% in Georgia. It's even around 50% in Texas. So, you know, although I'm telling you that Wisconsin's super important, I also would not rule out the possibility that Democrats could win Texas in this election, which is really an astonishing thing to say at the same time that I'm suggesting

that Democrats have some challenges ahead of them in the Electoral College. But I think the main point that I would make on this is not so much that it's impossible for the Democrats to win by other means, but that that is sort of not the path of least resistance. It's not taking the opportunity the president has given them. It would be trying to force your way through a different path. And it's also a way that would tend to exacerbate the gap between the national popular vote and the electoral college. Increases the chance of a big gap. It increases the size of the gap. Now, the Democrats could say, well, go back to something I sort of suggested earlier, which is that the Democrats are making gains in the Sun Belt and sort of losing ground over time in the Rust Belt. As that trend continues, Sunbelt states are turning blue, but they haven't flipped

blue yet. They're just moving that way while the Democrats fall behind in the states that have traditionally been most important. This point where we are now, where the Midwest is still better than the Sunbelt, is a point where if you then choose to go for the Sunbelt in spite of that and try and move those Sunbelt states, you'll make a lot of gains there before you've turned them blue. And you would be padding the Democratic margin nationwide before you've won electoral votes. This is what you were explaining before, Nate, how Trump could win re-election through the Electoral College, even as he loses more of the popular vote. So as Democrats gain popularity in the Sunbelt, they're gaining popular votes, individual voters. But until they have control of the Sun

belt, that doesn't change the Electoral College math. So the much clearer path in 2020 is to go after Wisconsin. The white voters there and the Electoral College votes there. Yeah. Seems like a straightforward option that requires no fundamental changes in the composition of the electorate, doesn't require you to tap into people that are not registered to vote, they're just, they're there and ready for it. And they are probably looking for a Democrat to make the pitch to them. The Democrats may not want to do that, or it may turn out that the president has the ability to rally those people back behind him with a strategy based on immigration and racial polarization. In that event, the Democrats may have to resort to Plan B

to go through the Sun Belt. Right now, a majority of voters in Wisconsin say they disapprove of the president. You can try and win him. What you're saying about the choice that Democrats now face, it's kind of reminding me of the choice that Republicans were facing after 2012 when they commissioned this report about what had happened.

And their takeaway about why Mitt Romney lost was that they need to do a much better job of appealing to people of color. But then Trump comes along, and he rejects that and says, no, let's just go harder at the white voter. And he does that, and he wins, seems to prove the autopsy report wrong. It feels like the Democrats are facing a very similar choice right now. They are in a certain sense. I mean, the president's choice to pursue white voters works in the short term. It certainly seemed to work in 2016 because these white working class states in the Midwest matter so much in the electoral college. But the president did not win the national popular

vote in 2016. So if you're, you know, the people doing the autopsy and thinking about the broad condition of the Republican Party, it is quite possible that those conclusions were borne out by the 2016 presidential election result. Certainly, the diversification of Texas and Arizona and Georgia is posing a real risk to the party's hold on those states. And over the longer term, that's the real danger that the Republicans face by pursuing that strategy. When it comes to the short term, though, the question is like whether the future is here or not. And, you know, at some point, the Democrats are going to have that breakthrough in the sunbelt, I think. I don't know what election it will be. I don't know if it will be 2020.

And it will be difficult to sort of predict until it does happen, I think, or at least until the polls say that they've had that breakthrough. But at least for now, that breakthrough has not come. So both parties could very well decide to focus on white voters in 2020 and put off this larger, possibly very necessary reckoning with the diversity of the American electorate because they just want to win now. That's right. There's a growing disconnect between the growing demographics of the country and the way our electoral system represents the population. The Electoral College, more than anything else,

gives weight to the close states. Historically in this country, the close states have been in the Midwest, and the Midwest remains pretty white. So if you're a political party that is strictly thinking about your chances of victory, you'll end up focusing on balance more on the needs of white voters than non-white voters, simply because of their distribution in the country and the way our electoral system is configured. As long as the electoral college is in place, our presidential elections will come down to the most competitive states in the country. And for now, those states are relatively

white and relatively working class in the Midwest. Nate, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. And the total number of votes given to each candidate was as follows. Jeremy Hunt, 46,656. Boris Johnson, 92,153. And therefore I give notice that Boris Johnson is elected as the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party. On Tuesday, Boris Johnson was elected as the leader of Britain's Conservative Party and therefore the country's next Prime Minister. Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. Thank you.

In a speech after the results were announced, Johnson confronted his immediate challenge of carrying out the cause he has long championed, Britain's departure from the European Union. Today, at this pivotal moment in our history, we have to reconcile two sets of instincts, two noble sets of instincts, between the deep desire for friendship and free trade and mutual support in security and defense

between Britain and our European partners, and the simultaneous desire, equally deep and heartfelt, for democratic self-government in this country. Despite the failures of his predecessor, Theresa May, to deliver Brexit, Johnson promised to meet the October 31st deadline set by the European Union, whether he reaches a negotiated exit or not. I read in my Financial Times this morning that no incoming leader has ever faced such a daunting set of circumstances, it said. Well, I look at you this morning and I ask myself, do you look

daunted? Do you feel daunted? I don't think you look remotely daunted to me. And I think that we know that we can do it and that the people of this country are trusting in us to do it and we know that we will do it. And four months after the release of his report on the Russia investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller will testify before two House committees today. The testimony will begin at 8.30 a.m. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.