Biden could well win the war come November
Now Biden leads Trump 48pc to 47pc with that cohort — a figure based on an average of 48 national polls by the polling site FiveThirtyEight. The New York Times has reported that internal Republican polling has shown the same change.
This is a massive shift: no Democrat has won this cohort since Al Gore in 2000. If the shift holds until polling starts, Biden would be in an incredibly strong electoral position.
Even if the strategy worked only in Florida, the state with the second oldest population — that would be half the job done. If Biden flipped this swing state, he would take away Trump’s most realistic path to electoral college success. A late April poll had Biden leading Trump 52pc to 42pc among voters 65 and older in Florida.
A concerted campaign to turn this current dip into a cemented trend is a must. The immediate anger at the crisis will subside, the deaths will turn from tragedies to statistics. People will forget.
Democrats need to use the current attention on Trump’s decisions and make sure that over-65s are left with the linked perception that he was callous and uncaring with their lives. He prioritised his re-election over their survival. They must turn the president’s short-term adversity into a lasting negative perception.
Trump’s campaign has already reacted to the initial loss of this support. Last Tuesday he announced a major initiative to cap insulin prices at $35, aimed purely at this demographic — claiming that “This is a big day for seniors”.
The president is worried. His campaign is worried. And you can see that most clearly via his consistent attacks on postal ballots. Trump has made efforts to oppose Democratic initiatives to make postal ballots more widely available, a move designed to aid voting during coronavirus. He’s done all he can to mislead the public about the integrity of postal voting; falsely claiming it will lead to “total election fraud” while threatening to withhold federal funding to states which continue to pursue widening postal ballots.
This is the most consequential fight in the election — because a depressed turnout means a Trump victory.
Twitter’s decision last week to finally flag two of Trump’s postal ballot claims as “unsubstantiated” is further evidence of this importance. Of all the mud that has been slung, this is the issue that their CEO Jack Dorsey finally felt they had to move on. Even if nothing but an outright ban would impact Trump’s support at this point — it’s still a welcome step from the social media platform largely responsible for Trump’s success. A new norm has been created, one that might inhibit the rise of the next populist pretender.
The focus on postal ballots makes sense from Trump’s tunnelled perspective. If it works, it will affect the Democratic vote, if it doesn’t, it will allow him to cry deceit, theft and corruption if he happens to lose in November.
Even if Joe Biden is successful in November, Trump would still be president for two-and-a-half months — he won’t go quietly into the night. Regardless, we haven’t seen the last of the Donald and his imagined dynasty.
The question that remains is: will he be a triumphant two-term victor or a bitter former president — plotting an unlikely 2024 return?
The answer depends on the battlegrounds the Democrats choose to fight on.