Election pundits had their second consecutive presidential election night forecast in a row explode in their faces. Why their predicted Biden presidential landslide and Democratic takeover of the Senate never materialized remains to be fully explained and analyzed; but no amount of rationalization will set their performance right. Even when all the mail-in and early votes are tallied in the key swing states, it is clear that pollsters need to reconsider what is wrong with their methodology.
Alternatively, analysts and journalists would be well advised to consider studying if voters are becoming poll averse. This is despite the fact that today’s polls are all designed to account for aberrant, contradictory, and evasive replies. In fact, this problem is not exclusively an American problem as British as well as Israeli voters, for example, have been destroying the reputation of even the best pollsters for decades. Extrapolating and predicting voting based on highly sophisticated models are being challenged by voters’ actual behavior. (Curiously, this polling industry problem explains why most political scientists only engage in the post-mortem analyses and refrain from engaging in predicting.)
With respect to the actual decisions of the voters in this election, the exit polls revealed an extremely depressing fact about Americans. Voters cared more about jobs than health. Election night exit polls indicated that less than 20% of voters viewed their concern for a leader to lead the nation out of the COVID-19 crisis as the primary reason for their vote. On the other hand, one-third of the voters said it was the economy which drove their vote. It was clear that re-opening the economy and jobs, which Trump sought to accomplish in the midst of the pandemic was more important to many voters than adhering to health warnings to reduce the dangers from COVID-19.
Embedded in this rationale was faith in the effectiveness of the capitalist system, seen especially when the President sought to re-open the economy too fast at the expense of endangering large segments of the population. Accepting Trump’s rationale was more convincing to many voters than protecting human lives. This explanation does not even consider evaluating Trump’s attitudes on larger health care issues, repeal of Obamacare, or protecting people with pre-existing conditions.
If Biden eventually wins the election, it is evident from Trump’s remarks early this morning that the President does not intent to ride off quietly into the sunset. The number of billable hours that the legal profession will collect over the next several weeks, as the President challenges the vote tallies in the swing states, might eventually top lawyers’ bookings from the 2000 Bush vs Gore litigation. In fact, as President Trump did predict, some of these cases could eventually arrive at the newly filled SCOTUS.
For the Democratic Party even if Biden wins, there will be a major reckoning as to why they did not capture the Senate and lost seats in the House. They need to assess how and why they mis-read the preferences of so many voters. Among the questions to be answered were whether the Democrats have a leadership problem in the Congress, were they perceived as too deferential to the party’s progressive wing, and was Biden too old fashioned to engage the voters in the 21st Century?
At the same time, the Republicans—especially if Trump loses—will need to decide if they are the party now of the Trumpers. The GOP needs to consider whether they still have a brand of their own and, if so, what is it and who will lead it? Will Trump’s sycophants be the future of the Republican Party? Does the right-wing progressive, neo-isolationist flank represent the future of the Republican Party and/or is there any possibility for a moderate wing to remerge?
These represent some of the challenges which emerge from the 2020 election both for the short-term as well as the immediate and long-term future. In the interim, the vote counting continues, the American people wait, and the election lawyers mount up while everyone awaits the final outcome on yesterday’s vote.
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