Are there people out there who don’t usually vote, young men perhaps, that the polls aren’t picking up and are swinging to Trump in large numbers?
A surprising word always comes up with Trump supporters when you ask why they’re supporting him: calm.
They’re mostly talking about foreign policy. That they think that despite the bravado, the Nato beef, the Putin whispering, the world was safer and more stable under Trump: no wars in Ukraine or the Middle East. Whatever your opinions on Trump, there is an overriding sense that, despite Covid, his years in power were rosier than now. Polls suggest with the passage of time, people look more and more favourably on Trump’s four years.
That is why the Trump team in many ways have cause for optimism: with the polls so tight in the swing states, that is good news. Trump outperformed his polls in 2016 and 2020, so the campaign and supporters see this as a slam dunk. When you ask Kamala Harris supporters if it’ll be a close race, they say of course. Ask the same question to the Trump brigade, and they say no chance. He’ll win by a landslide. The polls are wrong.
Yet why is Trump going out on the campaign trail and not solely talking about the economy or immigration – issues which he knows matter to people and knows win him votes – but bombarding voters with messages of fear and claims that the Democrats are cheating already? One suggestion is that Trump is no longer being restrained by his campaign team and becoming more and more like the unleashed man who triumphed in 2016. He wants to recreate that win again.
On his darkening rhetoric and claims of cheating, it is notable how that cuts through. The claim that non-Americans are voting, amplified by fake online videos (some from Russia), comes up on the trail. One individual in Florida told me that she “had heard statewide in some locations that there are attempts to register non-citizens”. If this election is as close as the polls suggest, that battle over disputing ballots, about delaying certification, could become the big story.
Is Trump’s team doing that because they feel they might lose? Possibly, but that operation to question the election system and put in an army of lawyers to dispute the results has been in the making for years.
But could there be a scenario where this is not a huge dispute over the result? If Trump or Harris win by sizeable margins, then the election is done and dusted. That will depend on so-called “silent voters”: are there people out there who don’t usually vote, young men perhaps, that the polls aren’t picking up and are swinging to Trump in large numbers? Or is there a swathe of independents, older women, traditional Republicans, turning their back on Trump and voting Democrat?
That’s what both campaigns are wondering – and wishing.