‘Trump shooting makes chance of Biden re-election almost non-existent’, says Republican pollster

Whit Ayres is a Republican pollster and the founder and president of North Star Opinion Research.

Jackie Long: The very point of this sort of violence is to disrupt, to destabilise. What impact do you think this act will have on the election?

Whit Ayres: It’s a sombre day in America. One of the essential promises of democratic governance is that we settle our differences, no matter how intense they are, with ballots rather than bullets. And that obviously did not happen yesterday. I think that we have a presidential election here where Joe Biden had a very slim chance to be re-elected before yesterday. After yesterday, his chances of re-election are almost nonexistent because Donald Trump looks so strong and Joe Biden looks so weak.

Jackie Long: When you talk about how Donald Trump looks and that he looks strong, what undoubtedly will become the iconic image of this election, this moment in history, is that image of President Trump with his fist raised in the air saying ‘fight, fight, fight’. How are you reading that?

Whit Ayres: That is his brand. He is strong, and that is the very picture of strength in the face of an assassin’s bullet. So that will go down as the iconic picture of Donald Trump in this election, and it works to his advantage and Joe Biden’s disadvantage.

Jackie Long: But how does it work and play out for America’s future, in a sense, because many people are saying as soon as this happened, what mattered is how the political leaders responded.

Whit Ayres: I think so far the political leaders have responded well on both sides of the aisle. They have called for unity. They have called for settling our differences peacefully. But what this means for America and the world, I think, is very likely a Trump presidency starting next year. I find it hard to believe that the Democrats are going to meekly go along with Joe Biden, whom even a majority of Democrats believe is too old to serve effectively in a second term. Their only hope is to substitute Joe Biden with someone else, not Kamala Harris, but say a popular Democratic governor who would stand a better chance of giving Donald Trump a serious contest than Joe Biden or Kamala Harris would.

Jackie Long: In terms of how the election campaigns are run, we know that America is facing the biggest surge in political violence since the 70s. His campaign team were very quick to blame Joe Biden for what they said was demonising Mr Trump. But within hours of the shooting, the Trump campaign sent out a text asking for contributions, saying ‘they’re not after you, they’re after me’, weaponising what’s happened, arguably.

Whit Ayres: That has been Donald Trump’s modus operandi all the way through. That happened after he was charged with various felonies. It happened after he was convicted of 34 felonies. So they’ve raised money off of all of these attacks on Donald Trump, and so this is simply par for the course for their campaign.