If President Trump declares himself the winner of the 2020 election before the votes are all counted, we are heading for deep trouble. According to a recent poll done by Data for Progress and the Justice Collaborative Institute, 77% of likely Republican voters say they would trust Trump’s word if he did so (46% “a lot”; 31% “a little”). Similarly, 70% said they would trust Fox News (36% “a lot”; 34% “a little) if it made that call. No other major media outlets exhibit the same level of trust from likely Republican voters.
While an optimist could read this survey the opposite way — only 46% of likely Republican voters said they trusted Trump’s word “a lot” — it should be clear that history hinges a lot on what Trump says Election Night. Maybe he’ll be coy. Maybe the saner side of his family will somehow convince to hold back. But if not, he’ll be pushing the country down a slippery slope that is already being well-greased. A little over a week ago, former top Trump adviser Steve Bannon (and longtime nihilist who hungers for a World War III) told a Republican group that, “At 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock… on November 3, Donald J. Trump is going to walk into the Oval Office, and he may hit a tweet before he goes in there… and he’s going to sit there, having won Ohio, and being up in Pennsylvania and Florida, and he’s going to say, ‘Hey, game’s over.’” Bannon has also been promoting the idea that the “blue shift,” where late-counted ballots tilt Democratic, is actually just a “blue steal.”
A second poll, also done by Data for Progress and the Justice Collaborative Institute, is also worrisome. In a hypothetical scenario where the election in Pennsylvania is close, with Trump ahead on Election Night but millions of mail-in ballots eventually tilting the result to Biden, 70% of likely Republican voters say they would put their trust in the Republican-controlled state legislature if it certified the results for Trump and voted to send the state’s electors his way. Even if all the major networks, including Fox, were declaring Biden the victor in this scenario, a majority of Republican voters (61%) said they’d still be more likely to trust the state legislature over a decision by the Democratic secretary of state to certify the results for Biden. This matters a lot, because if Trump and his allies pressure Republican-controlled legislatures to deliver him their electoral votes because they don’t trust the actual count, we will be in the full-blown version of the post-election crisis we’re hoping to avoid.
While for the next two weeks what matters most is how well Biden and Trump supporters get out their voters, how the media covers the election results — and the public’s response to those results — will matter enormously. Republicans trust the media far less than Democrats to make the right call. A new survey from the Pew Research Center of registered voters finds that 49% of Biden supporters express a lot of confidence in their news sources to make the right call, just 34% of Trump supporters do. Add into this mix the toxic brew that is QAnon, plus the spread of new conspiracy theories that fit perfectly into the Q mindset — “The deep state is plotting a ‘color revolution’ against Trump” being the latest — plus the right’s paranoia about Antifa, and you have the recipe for a post-electoral explosion. If Trump falsely declares victory, and Americans go out into the streets to peacefully protest, as is our right and duty, the days after November 3rd will be a challenging time for all of us.
As we slouch towards this new Babylon, I’m struck by how far we’ve let the goalposts drift. Most of the commentary about this situation I’m describing usually includes a comment along the lines of “this is why the election needs to be a landslide.” Weirdly, we seem to have forgotten that no, to become president you don’t have to win by a landslide. George W. Bush lost the 2000 election to Al Gore by 543,000 votes, and only won the electoral college 271–266. Trump lost the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million votes. The national polling average shows Biden leading Trump 52.2% to 42.0%. Let’s say Biden wins 50.2% and Trump gets 44% (with the rest going to third-party candidates). If, as some are projecting, a record 150 million Americans vote this year (a turnout rate of 62%, which would be slightly better than 2008), that would mean Biden earning nearly 9 million more votes than Trump. In such a context, any legislator thinking about voting to give their state’s electoral votes to the popular vote loser should pressed to answer why the people’s overwhelming will should be so nakedly thwarted….
This is an excerpt from the latest issue of my new newsletter, The Connector. To read the rest, go here: https://buttondown.email/msifry/archive/slouching-towards-electoral-babylon/ And subscribe: https://buttondown.email/msifry.