Vox
So where are we at this point in the race?
Before I start, lets discuss polls.
During the 20th century, American political polling was driven by the Gallop Organisation (Gallop) who were considered the gold standard of pollsters.
However, once mobiles and the internet went mainstream, from the 90’s onwards, polling got more complicated and the voters harder to find. The days when most voters were contactable by a landline were over. As landline polling became less reliable with younger folks, the polling, even for experienced professionals like Gallop, got harder.
In 2012, in their final forecast, Gallop projected that the Republican Mitt Romney would win the 2012 election. That was wrong. Obama won comfortably. Shortly after that, Gallop gave up on election forecasting polling.
Since 2014, polling has become increasingly useless as a guide to predicting who will win elections.
We all remember how the polling overwhelmingly indicated that Hilary Clinton would win the presidency. All those state polling which showed her miles ahead of Trump in the Rust Belt days and weeks before the election melted upon impact with electoral reality. Things barely improved in 2018, with polling totally wrong with the Florida election, to give just one example, where the Republican candidate Ron DeSantis won. Ignoring the outlier Trafalgar Group, the average polling lead for his opponent was 5%. DeSantis won the election by 0.4%.
There are many reasons for the decline in polling over the last decade, but a key reason is its extremely difficult to reach voters these days. Many people refuse to answer pollsters, especially Republicans and those living in the countryside. Also, folks who work during the week simply don’t have time to answer pollsters. So those pollsters that don’t do their work through the weekend, will not get a proportionate sample and capture those voters (often Republican leaning types) who are too busy to waste time answering polling questions (which can run to 72!).
Getting polling right is expensive, takes time (longer than most pollsters allow) and should use multiple ways to get to those hard-to-find voters who are key to an accurate polling sample. Most pollsters simply fail to do that these days which is why they have been unreliable during the previous election cycles. Even those pollsters, Big Data/People’s Pundit (PP) and Trafalgar Group (TG), who do a better job than most, aren’t perfect.
So, when trying to work out who is going to win an election, I don’t rely on public polling. Registration data is a very useful metric. It proved to be more reliable in 2016 then the polling, which overwhelmingly suggested that Clinton would win the election. Only certain states provide party-based registration data, but of the data available its looking good for the Republicans, in particular the battlefield states of Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina.
Primary election data/models are also useful because they are a powerful proxy for turnout and enthusiasm for each side. A few different political analysts use primary data. One is Professor Helmut Norpoth, whose Primary model has forecast the majority of US elections. His forecast, based entirely on the primary election data, is a Trump landslide in November. There are those who critique his model but despite that he has a better track record then most pollsters so I take their criticisms with a pinch of salt.
On a common-sense level, his model makes intuitive sense. If millions of people are prepared to vote for Donald Trump in a primary election with no real opposition (unlike 2016) in historic numbers, its likely that those same Republican voters will come out in big numbers on election day.
A variation of that primary based model is the Washington State primary results.
Henry Colson of the Washington Post reviewed the data and wrote “…the party that led in the primary also won the seat in the general every time. That track record is why the state’s recent primary results are so important. With more than 99 percent of the votes counted, Republicans have a higher share of the total vote than they did in 2018 in eight of the state’s 10 congressional districts.” The conclusions from the Washington State data are;
- Republicans are doing 5% better in rural and small metro places compared to their 2018 mid-term performance.
- On a national scale Trump will be much more competitive in swing states such as Wisconsin and North Carolina than the polls currently show.
- Trump and GOP House and Senate candidates across the country could out-perform expectations once again. Indeed, nine of the House GOP’s top Democratic target seats have at least substantial portions of voters who live in rural and small-town areas. Key Senate targets in Maine, Montana, North Carolina and Georgia have similar profiles.
- The Republicans are struggling in metropolitan suburbia and haven’t improved since the 2018 mid-terms results.
The above data matches what I am reading in terms of registration (GOP are doing much better than the Dems in registering new voters, particularly voters who have never voted before) and the more reliable pollsters out there. Other non-polling metrics also indicate an enthusiasm gap, whether they are Trump/Pence signs which vastly outnumber Biden’s or the huge numbers turning up for Trump rallies across America in comparison to the Democrats.
We are still three weeks away from election day but overall, I am still reasonably confident (with a 60% probability) that President Trump will get re-elected.
So, what about the electoral college map? Well, everything I am reading and watching seems to suggest that despite what the mainstream polls are suggesting (remember all those media articles suggesting Texas was going blue in 2016!) The GOP are looking pretty good in Florida, Ohio, Utah, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona (which despite a small shift away in registration numbers should remain red).
Trump’s polling among African-Americans and Hispanics are better than 2016 and he is doing particularly well among Cuban and Venezuelans in Florida. In 2016, according to exit polls, Trump got 8% of the African-American vote. Even the mainstream polls suggest that he will do better than that this time around on the back of rising support among working class Black men (between 11 to 15%).
Among Hispanics, Trump polling is now consistently in the 30’s, a significant improvement on his 28% share of the Latino vote received in 2016. Rich Baris, has commented that 2020 will be a class/income-based election, with blue-collar voters of different backgrounds and races starting to coalesce around the Republicans whilst the Democrats consolidate among the upper-middle class. This is very much John Greer’s thinking – who accurately forecast the 2016 election – that class is the major factor driving an electoral realignment within American politics. The Democrats are increasingly the party of the high-income elites and the upper middle classes whilst the Republican Party under Trump is increasingly a blue-collar and middle-income mass party across the flyover states.
Of course, alignments are a decades long process and don’t happen in one election cycle. But the trends you saw in 2016, with working class non-college educated whites shifting to the Republicans whilst college educated white females increasingly moving to the Democrats is likely to accelerate. What is more interesting, and far less picked up by the mainstream media, is the growing support for the GOP among blue-collar minorities, in particular men, from Hispanic and African-American backgrounds. Greer has written for a while that it is this shift that will prove key to Trump’s re-election in 2020 which he thinks will be a landslide with approximately 350 electoral college votes.
The other key consideration is turnout. Students are usually a powerful card for the Democrats in getting their vote out. This year, thanks to Covid, colleges are locked down and student registration and turnout will be significantly reduced from 2016. The data from Washington State suggests – and this tallies with what other analysts are saying – that pollsters are under-estimating the turnout among rural non-college educated Republican voters who will come out in droves for Trump.
My forecast, and this is currently interim and not final, is the following:
- The Republicans will keep their majority in the Senate.
- The Republicans will do better than expected in the House but I’m not in a position, right now, to predict who will definitely win a majority in the House.
- Trump is likely to win the southern states of Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. I’m also confident he will win Utah and Ohio again.
- Among the Rust Belt states, the election looks very tight at the moment, with both TG and PP in their latest polls showing Trump 2 to 3% behind Biden in the key Rust Belt state of Pennsylvania. The Rust Belt looks competitive but Trump needs to win over the independent and remaining undecided voters to get those key states over the line.
- Nevada, with its large Hispanic population, could also be in play. A recent Politico article warned that the Democrats could lose the state and recent chatter online suggests that the Trump campaign are increasingly bullish about flipping the state. I’m going to tentatively predict a narrow Trump win in Nevada.
- Outlier states, primarily Colorado and New Mexico, both with large Hispanic populations, may prove closer than the mainstream polls suggest.
- New Hampshire is likely to remain Democrat.
So, to summarise, I think the Trump team have around 250 to 260 EC votes that are reasonably secure and a cluster of battlefield states, primarily in the Rust Belt, in play over the next few weeks. If, and it is a big if, the Democrats manage to win the Rust Belt – Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, Joe Biden will win the election.
However, if my hard predictions prove correct, and in addition Trump wins over say 2 out of the 4 Rust Belt states, he wins the election. And that excludes any further wins in the south-west, like Nevada. Despite what the mainstream media and polls suggest, the pathway to a Trump win is wider than they think but this election is not over yet and the winner will likely be decided in the Rust Belt.
I will proceed to make a final forecast shortly before the election.
forecastingintelligence 
Ok, I had too much coffee so I’m going to comment once again.
First of all, putting aside polling data, let’s look at this-
‘On a common-sense level, his model makes intuitive sense. If millions of people are prepared to vote for Donald Trump in a primary election with no real opposition (unlike 2016) in historic numbers, its likely that those same Republican voters will come out in big numbers on election day.’
lol It doesn’t work like that.. The margins were small for key states, and in the US we’ve already had demographic changes that favor Biden in these 4 years.
Common sense, you have an incumbent who has presided over a huge death toll in a pandemic he kept publicly minimizing, to the point of making fun of Biden for wearing masks in their recent debate. And then turning around and contracting it himself. Are you going to pretend this crazy stuff didn’t happen? Do you think people shrug this off like they did the Access Hollywood Tape? Trump is cratering among seniors now.
Also, what you’re ignoring are a lot of very material facts as to 2016
Hillary had the fact Comey was opening an investigation into her, that was big news and hurt her
Hillary had questions about her health (she collapsed at one point, remember)
Jill Stein was getting more support than the Green Party is now. This is an older article, so it doesnt factor events now, but — https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/11/13576798/jill-stein-third-party-donald-trump-win
Hillary’s odds were harmed in the fact she was a woman heading the ticket. That’s just how things are
Hillary was much more personally disliked than Biden
.
The state polls were more accurate in 2018 than 16 overall. You can’t seem to stop cherry picking lol
That’s why the number of house seats gained was close to predicted, as well as the make-up of the senate. No one said polls were perfect. And -again- that’s why your buddy Greer made completely off-base predictions in 2018, although his predictions this time round are in outer space.
My prediction- a very decisive Biden win, possibly a landslide. Trump is going to get crushed. Early voting is not looking good for the GOP. People aren’t SUPER-enthusiastic about Biden, but they sure as hell are chomping at the bit to boot Trump.
Republicans know this, that’s why they are putting up fake ballot boxes, and in Texas, mandating only one box per district. And Trump won’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
Democratic turnout rates are higher than Republicans in every single county in Florida. 67 out of 67.
Out of the 1,782,663 mail ballots returned & reported, there are 386,799 voters who didn’t vote in
Of these new voters, registered
FlaDems are leading registered Republicans by 99,842.
DEM: 189,139
GOP: 89,297
N/3/I: 108,363
(And for Florida, Trump encouraged his supporters to do mail-in voting)
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We’ll see!
Personally, I find the whole thing fascinating. I’ve learn’t a huge amount about predictive election models, the electoral college voting system, the states and how the polling industry works.
I’m not a crystal ball and could be proven wrong on the day. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised or shocked if Biden wins – as explained in my latest post. However, unlike many, including yourself it seems, I certainly would not be surprised if Trump wins again. These polls are making big assumptions about turnout and who will come out to vote which could prove wrong.
I’m not going to go into the weeds on this. I’m reading across the board and trying to get a handle on it like the rest of us. We’ll see in a few weeks what the result is.
Whatever happens, as a political nerd, the whole thing has proven very interesting. Love it 🙂
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“the huge numbers turning up for Trump rallies” may be misleading, given the ability of BLM to draw throngs.
Yesterday the Bookworm expressed the guess that, while pro-Biden enthusiasm is minimal, passion vs. DJT is huge, such that
“you don’t know if that nasal, mumbling person taking the poll is a BLM or Antifa supporter who is creating a database of people to harass….
Even if the person on the other end of the phone isn’t an Antifa/BLM monster, the polling companies probably have eminently hackable databases….
we have to look at where leftist enthusiasm really lies. Then, we vote as if our lives depend on it (because they do)….”
See https://www.bookwormroom.com/2020/10/12/are-we-looking-in-the-right-places-for-voter-enthusiasm/ , for pix of huge BLM rallies.
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In 2018, 538 projected 41 Democratic flips in the House. There were 41 flips. 2018 is generally seen as a very accurate year for election polling. Certainly Florida was an outlier in that, but it is cherry picking extraordinaire to only mention it.
I think it is among the great mistakes to see the two old parties as a class division. Exit polls showed Trump voters had a higher median income than Clinton and most working people live in cities and vote Democratic. Just what is the difference then between Sheldon Adelson and Michael Bloomberg? Or a Biden voter in the city and Trump voter in the rural countryside? Culture is the defining division now. That is much broader than racism, though it includes it. It also includes acceptance of homosexuality as a lifestyle, trans too. It means accepting non-binary gender and same sex marriage. Climate change is not technically a cultural issue, but it has become one, as sadly, so has wearing a mask. I don’t want to simplify who is a Trump voter as there are plenty exceptions to the above. But Trump’s core constituency relies a lot more heavily on retirees with a comfortable nest egg than it does struggling blue collar workers, though there certainly are some.
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“polls showed Trump voters had a higher median income than Clinton”.
Of course they did, because so many Dem voters are from “the 47%” to which Romney referred.
But, if you take a closer look at real data, e.g. at
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/b8ow3q7r1e/econTabReport.pdf (esp. p. 20),
you see that Dem support among voters making under 50K, and those getting over 100K, is quite higher, than among voters making $50,000 – $100,000.
Likewise among women (much under the grip of arch-feminists like Hillary, Pelosi, Feinstein, MacKinnon, Maddow) and those with Graduate degrees (much under the grip of “intellectuals” like Obama, Edsall, Coates, Krugman, Dyson).
So, in a way, Culture is the defining division now, but in the sense that JMG stresses:
those with Graduate degrees (esp. females) get off on sneering at the Archie Bunkers (for the latters’ Toxic Masculinity and White Fragility), while counting on their ability to play the Underclass, to keep The Educated in their cushy office sinecures.
For The “Educated”, this game is largely, to avenge the refusal of the Deplorables’ fathers, to back The “Power to The People” Revolution of the 60s.
The 2016 election was mostly a revolt of the Deplorables, vs. what JMG called The Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name.
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‘Culture is the defining division now, but in the sense that JMG stresses:
those with Graduate degrees (esp. females) get off on sneering at the Archie Bunkers’
I’m not a woman and I don’t have a grad degree, but I know a number who fit that category. They don’t ‘get off’ on sneering at Trump supporters. They are more dismayed and worried than anything else. It sounds like Greer and maybe you get their impressions of the world from the crap on social media. I would agree the white fragility/toxic rhetoric and all that can be extreme and further polarizing, but thigs rarely come out of a vacuum.
It’s really telling how you are not mentioning how it goes both ways, as well. Trump’s strongest bloc are the Evangelical Christians, the same people who have spent decades castigating and slandering people who don’t share their beliefs (incl other kinds of christians), while trying to use State Power to implement their particular dogmas.
Further, I live in a Northeast Suburb that swung strongly for Trump. I can hear hateful sentiments out of the mouths of people firsthand, including the N word. I’m a white guy and other white people sometimes assume I share their sentiments, perhaps because I don’t look like a ‘soyboy’ or whatnot. This hasn’t only happened in bars here, either. That counts as ‘sneering’, does it not?
A substantial number of Trump voters are uneasy with the demographic shifts in the US. Why pretend it’s more about some ivory tower person looking down their nose at them, rather than that?
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When you accuse me of pretending, that “it’s more about some ivory tower person looking down” than about demographic shifts, you show who you are, for all fair-minded folks to see, most of whom should have no trouble seeing that I “pretended” no such thing.
Typical Lefty straw-man tactics.
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Well, sorry about the word pretend, that was ill-chosen. You believe sincerely 100% in what you type. fine.
If you think you’re being completely ‘fair-minded’ yourself, though, maybe reread your post Your characterizations are rather odd. For instance, the female PhDs I know who loathe Trump are not ‘under the grip’ of Pelosi, they find themselves disagreeing with her on various matters. They simply prefer her positions overall to the GOP. Here’s another example-
‘For The “Educated”, this game is largely, to avenge the refusal of the Deplorables’ fathers, to back The “Power to The People” Revolution of the 60s.’
I know a number of stridently anti-Trump, northeastern women with advanced degrees. This is not what is foremost on their minds. What is are things like reproductive rights, climate change, health care, and taxation. Also, what on earth makes you think these educated women necessarily have ‘cushy’ jobs?
Again, as far as sneering, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone more hateful than the evangelicals. Example- I grew up watching the 700 club, and was treated weekly to segments describing other christian sects as demonic, new agers as satanic, simple meditators and people using hypnosis as being demonic, and all the rest. Should they get a free pass for their contempt for other kinds of people?
‘Typical Lefty straw-man tactics.’
How do you know I’m some doctrinaire ‘lefty’? lol
My personal political views run from very left to moderate to very right, depending on the issue. So, you make as many assumptions as anyone else.
btw I just gotta say- Greer is consistently wrong about events. I mean, he said back earlier this year the virus would fade out by now lol Trump said that too (at least in public). Curious, isn’t it? It’s like some people are out of touch with reality lol
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I personally know three conservatives, all with young children, who never voted for Trump in the last election who are voting for him in this one. The rise of BLM and its violent marxist agenda is seen as an existential threat to our culture, our way of life and our faith. For us Trump is the only thing standing between us and that – and we WILL be voting.. Whether that will be enough to give us the election, I don’t know.
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Naomi – That’s backs up my belief that the divide is cultural, not economic.. Black Lives Matter is a civil rights movement, nothing more. Some of them have radical views, but not all. But everything you say about it was said about MLK too. And there were communists working with MLK, but he wasn’t and most weren’t. As far as I know, communists are allowed to support civil rights too. Every civil rights group that ever existed was called violent and communist (or anarchist or Bolshevik) at first. Fortunately most Americans have that picture in their mind of a black man pleading for his life as it ebbs away under the knee of the police, with other police watching and supporting, who clearly placed no value on that life. No, most police wouldn’t do that, but they do seem to look the other way for those that do.
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“most police wouldn’t do that, but they do seem to look the other way for those that do.”
If so, it happens that most protesters wouldn’t do that (e.g. burn police stations), but they do seem to look the other way for those that do, while the MSM all-but cheerleads for those who do.
As Naomi suggested, BLM and its violent marxist agenda (and MSM cheerleaders) are reasonably seen as an existential threat.
Until today’s Lefties get in the mood to address those concerns, with more than just the typical ad hominems/ straw men/ diversions, these Lefties aren’t remotely worth talking to.
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“everything you say about it was said about MLK….”
That’s totally irrelevant to what’s popping now.
As long as you Lefties keep harping on stuff from 60 years ago, when most of us non-Left were not alive or of age, we see little choice but to bet, that you’ll not rest until our forebearers’ missteps are totally avenged, and we’re all destroyed.
It’s something of a gas, to see today’s Lefties continue to outsmart themselves: too clever by half!
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‘As Naomi suggested, BLM and its violent marxist agenda (and MSM cheerleaders) are reasonably seen as an existential threat’
lol this is some heated rhetoric
New research, based on almost 900 politically-motivated plots and murders in the US since 1994, found only one person’s death in the last 25 years was linked to “antifa” or anti-fascists, and the person who died was the attacker (there was 1 antifa murderer more recent than this study_
In comparison, over that same period, 329 murders were linked to the far-right.
When the label was broadened from anti-fascists to left-wing violence, it found 21 victims had been killed since 2010, compared to 117 in right-wing violence in the same time period.
Jihadist groups were responsible for 95 people’s deaths since 2010.
-Center for Strategic and International Studies from July 2020
A review of more than 7,000 protests shows that 96 percent involved no property damage or injuries to police.
Police were reported injured in 1 percent of the protests. A law enforcement officer killed in California was allegedly shot by supporters of the far-right “boogaloo” movement, not anti-racism protesters. The killings in the line of duty of other law enforcement officers during this period were not related to the protests.
Only 3.7 percent of the protests involved property damage or vandalism. Some portion of these involved neither police nor protesters, but people engaging in vandalism or looting alongside the protests.
In short, our data suggest that 96.3 percent of events involved no property damage or police injuries, and in 97.7 percent of events, no injuries were reported among participants, bystanders or police.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-summers-blm-protests-werent-as-violent-as-portrayed/
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“it happens that most protesters wouldn’t do that (e.g. burn police stations), but they do seem to look the other way for those that do, while the MSM all-but cheerleads for those who do.”
I happen to think that is a good point. There are protesters who are too tolerant of destruction by others. But if so, why do you think BLM has a violent Marxist agenda if it’s just some of them being too tolerant? There have been hundreds if not thousands of BLM protests and most have not been destructive at all, just like most encounters with police do not involve brutality. Neither group is bad on the whole, but only one of them has state approval to coerce. My point is just that some of the public is responding to the newest civil rights groups like they did almost every one before it.
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“do you think BLM has a violent Marxist agenda….?”
The useful Idiots, maybe not, but the leaders, definitely.
The brass can’t always play all of the useful Idiots into rioting, but maybe they don’t need riots all the time, as long as the MSM slobbers all over whatever riots can be ginned up.
“Neither group is bad on the whole, but only one of them has state approval….”, and functions under rules derived from court rulings (Google “Use of Force Model”, by Marsh & Desmedt), and gets trained at academies run by cronies of Dem mayors.
Leadership is primary and decisive, but the MSM says boo about any of this.
They only care, about spinning everything for their pals.
Check out Taibbi, on “Hate Inc.”
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LOL After spending months/years chortling about a Trump re-election Greer isnt even allowing discussion of the election in his open post this month.Guess he sees the writing on the wall…and Trump himself wants states to stop counting ballots on Nov 3 lol. That is not how state laws operate. He knows hes losing.
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I think that’s a tad unfair.
Greer has consistently stated that he thinks Trump will comfortably win the election and the only question mark for him is whether the Trump manages to win the popular vote and House or not.
Any debate will go down to “what about the polls” – Greer, doesn’t subscribe much to public polling (nor did he throughout 2016) and his analysis on why Trump will win comfortably is based on fundamentals.
e.g. Trump has benefited the blue-collar class vs v vs the comfortable 20% who are increasingly represented by the Democratic Party. As Trump eats into traditional Democratic voting groups like the African-Americans, Hispanics and builds support among blue-collar white workers, that’s how he will win the election.
Essentially, this election is driven by the new class dynamics going on.
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A tad unfair?
Greer’s post, since just yesterday, already has 256 Comments.
The prior week’s posts had totals of 267, 142, and 178 Comments.
So, he wisely guessed, that there indeed would be plenty of grist for his readers’ mills, apart from the election.
But, leave it to his Lefty critics, to try to spin this wise decision, as a bid to hide from “the writing on the wall”.
If Biden wins, look for these Lefties to hyper-institutionalize their love for deployment of ad hominem ploys, vs. anything other than abject slobbering upon the Party Line.
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‘ I think that’s a tad unfair.
Greer has consistently stated that he thinks Trump will comfortably win the election and the only question mark for him is whether the Trump manages to win the popular vote and House or not.’
? He made Trump a substantial part of his recent work and didn’t hesitate to talk about it or let others talk about it. He has a book coming out about the ‘magical’ reasons Trump won 2016. Obviously, now that it looks like Trump will lose, he doesn’t want to talk about the election. I fail to see what is unfair in pointing this out.
‘Any debate will go down to “what about the polls” – Greer, doesn’t subscribe much to public polling (nor did he throughout 2016) and his analysis on why Trump will win comfortably is based on fundamentals.’
All the debate there has previously been about the polls? No, so this doesn’t make sense.
‘Essentially, this election is driven by the new class dynamics going on.’
Seniors shifting to support of Biden isn’t because of ‘class dynamics’, but the pandemic.
and KAISHAKU said…
‘If Biden wins, look for these Lefties to hyper-institutionalize their love for deployment of ad hominem ploys, vs. anything other than abject slobbering upon the Party Line.’
So much unconscious irony therein…
and just a hint so you can appear less ranty- being opposed to Trump doesn’t necessarily mean one is a ‘leftist’.
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I suppose Greer favors astrology to polling? The fundamentals do not at all favor the incumbent. Nearly a quarter million dead and yet he says it’s over, solved. Even a growing GDP won’t make up for that, especially with super spreader rallies there for all to see.
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Factually incorrect.
Greer’s analysis is based on class which he went into great detail in 2016 (see https://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-01-21/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-resentment/) and has nothing to do with astrology.
You have a right to your own opinions but please to not spread misinformation about others.
Greer has said numerous times in his blog that his basic analysis hasn’t changed since 2016. Trump appeals to those outside the 20% of Americans who have benefited from the neoliberal policies pursued by both parties for the last 30 years (until 2016 when Trump took over the GOP) and the only difference from 2016 is that Trump will pick up more minority blue-collar voters then in 2016.
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Well he has used astrology to predict election results, I saw that in 2018, when I was still following his blog.
It does appear that Trump is going to get slightly increased support from Latino and Black voters, if you believe the polls. But this is not a class issue, it is culture. It is essentially all men and I saw a blog of black men saying they would vote for Trump who didn’t do so in 2016, and not one of them mentioned jobs or the economy. Mostly they talked about controlling their own destiny. It appeared to follow from the self-help concept that has a long history in African American thought. The irony is that Biden is doing better among white voters than Clinton did in 2016, especially white women, and that appears to be more than making up for the increased support among some minority voters. But again, that is if you believe the polls. Either way, we will know pretty soon.
Btw, I also reject the idea that Trump has moved away from neoliberal policies. The tax cut was pure neoliberalism, as is most of his environmental policy. His trade wars are not, but they have not really been effective. The Clintons and Biden also have a strong neoliberal history, but Biden is a weather vane and is being pulled away from it. If he is elected, we will see how that ends up. But with the exception of trade, Trump is about as pure an advocate for neoliberal economics as we have had in the White House in a long time. His cabinet is full of them. Biden could not be more neoliberal than Trump, and the Democratic Party grassroots is moving away from that. They rejected Bloomberg easily and Democrats are no longer so dependent on big money, as we have seen with the massive grassroots fundraising via ActBlue.
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