“Will you shut up, man!”
Former Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, showing all of our frustrations with a loud, obnoxious, dishonest, cheating blowhard of a president during the first debate.
We’ve probably had fewer eventful weeks in a presidential campaign than this one. Let’s recap because I guarantee that there is at least one important story from this past week that you either haven’t heard about yet or have already forgotten.
Sunday – New York Times reveals that it has Trump’s tax returns for two decades leading up to and including his first year in office.
Tuesday – The first presidential debate of 2020 is a complete shit show thanks to an out of control Trump trying to play to his base and get the press to stop talking about his tax returns. Also: instead of condemning white supremacy, he gives a wink and a nod order to the fascist and violent Proud Boys to “stand by” and adds some hardly dog whistles about street fighting over the election results. All in all, the worst and most embarrassing debate in presidential debate history.
Wednesday – Trump ignores Covid protocols yet again in Minnesota for another Nuremburg rally. There, he “threatens” to never return to Minnesota if he loses the state. Also, Hope Hicks gets Covid while on this trip (or possibly earlier, but she was on this trip). Trump abruptly cancels his rally for the next day in Wisconsin. By this time, he knows Hicks is sick but doesn’t tell anyone – including Biden or his team or Chris Wallace, who moderated Tuesday night’s debate.
Thursday – CNN releases audio files of Melania Trump insulting Christmas and showing no concern at all for children separated from the parents at the border. This is the first of supposedly several audio files recorded by the First Lady’s former assistant and “friend.” (Is anyone really “friends” with anyone else in Trumpland? Seriously, I mean the way you would consider someone a friend. The way these folks operate with each other is dishonest, suspicious, and disloyal. I am not taking Melania’s side here; she’s awful. But, who isn’t in Trumpland?)
Thursday – The New Yorker reports that high profile “Women for Trump” fundraiser and ridiculously loud and self-parodying “inspirational” speaker Kimberly Guilfoyle was the subject of a sexual harassment lawsuit when she worked at Fox News. Fox settled with her assistant for a reported $4 million and an NDA (and Guildoyle, who threatened other women at Fox to support Roger Ailes through his sexual harassment scandal, was sacked). Read the article for the details, but she sounds like the worst. In fact, she advised her assistant to sleep with Fox executives to advance her career. No surprise there. After all, she’s part of Trumpland (see above).
Thursday – The White House reveals that Hicks has tested positive for Covid. Reporting reveals that she has been in close proximity without a mask to Trump and a number of White House officials in just the past few days. Later, Trump announces that he and his wife have also tested positive.
Friday – Despite having never been warned or otherwise contacted by the White House, Biden and his wife Jill (and presumably others on his team) are tested for Covid. Biden announces that he and his wife have tested negative.
The biggest story this week that has not received much attention has played out over the week (and continues to evolve). And that’s related to the cash crunch at the Trump Campaign, which we have discussed in earlier posts. During the summer, Trump campaign manager and Trumpland hanger-on Brad Parscale was demoted in favor of Bill Stepien, a New Jersey GOP operative involved in Chris Christie’s Bridgegate scandal. By the end of August, Stepien was cancelling ad buys in a number of states out of concern that the campaign would run out of cash in October. Reportedly, other financial transactions at the campaign were also halted while Stepien sorted things out.
The campaign had raised $1.1 billion, but by the middle of the summer had spent $800 million of it. Parscale assumed that contributions would arrive in the fall to pay for whatever they needed. Stepien worried that the contributions were dwindling. After Mike Bloomberg announced that he would spend $100 million of his own money to help Biden win Florida, Trump said he was considering putting $100 million of his own money into the campaign. This raised some questions. Trump never uses his own money to pay for anything, why would he do this? Does this mean the campaign is out of money? An operation that raised over a billion dollars needed an infusion of cash to stay afloat? Of course, after the revelations about his tax returns, an additional question would be, “does he even have that much money to contribute?” Bloomberg started spending money in Florida; Trump stopped mentioning helping out his own campaign.
Around the time Parscale was demoted in July, with little notice or fanfare, the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint against the Trump Campaign with the Federal Elections Commission. In the complaint, it is alleged that members of the campaign set up a shell company to launder campaign contributions to “vendors” such as Trump corporate entities and Trumpland family members. Parscale was the person assigned to oversee the operation. The way it worked is that most or all of money to spend on vendors was paid to the shell company, which was then supposed to pay actual vendors to do the work. This was easily caught by CLC because on campaign finance reports vending expenses went to one single vendor – the shell company. The allegations are not just violations of campaign finance regulations, but could amount to serious criminal charges (indeed, we now know there is a criminal investigation). In this context, Parscale is demoted and Stepien is brought in to clean things up.
Then, because nothing in Trumpland comes without some bullshit reality show drama, Parscale is tackled outside his home by police and placed in protective custody after they are called there to investigate an armed suicidal man who has assaulted his wife. That happened on Sunday, just before the Times tax return scoop broke. And then, on Monday, reports surface that the White House is “freaking out” about whether Parscale will turn on them. This is an odd statement if you are unaware of the CLC complaint. What would Parscale be “turning on” while he is being hospitalized and perhaps charged with domestic violence? What does that have to do with the campaign? Well, once you understand the context better it makes more sense.
Perhaps this is what Trump was trying to deflect by his behavior at the debate rather than his tax returns, you may ask. Perhaps, but they are not unrelated issues. When you dig into the Times reporting on the tax returns you see patterns of behavior by Trump that are mirrored in the campaign’s shell company scheme. But, his behavior is more likely just Trump being Trump. He’s a jerk and he thinks playing by the rules – even ones you have explicitly agreed to observe – are for suckers. Certainly after the last 24 hours, it’s going to be difficult to see how the debate performance itself impacts the polling. But, we did get a few polls that were in the field between Tuesday and Thursday that might shed some insight into this.
Okay, now to the polling
One week ago today, Biden was ahead in the FiveThirtyEight polling average by 7.1 points. This morning it is Biden +8.2. This is not just the result of better quality pollsters reporting results, but that the more mediocre pollsters are also reporting better results for Biden. Let’s take a look at the polls that were in the field after Tuesday’s debate.
IBD/TIPP (A/B): in field 9/30-10/1 – Biden 49%, Trump 46%; Biden +3
Ipsos (B-): in field 9/29-10/1 – Biden 50%, Trump 41%; Biden +9
Change Research (C-): in field 9/29-9/30 – Biden 54%, Trump 41%; Biden +13
YouGov (B): in field 9/27-9/30 – Biden 50%, Trump 42%; Biden +8
Although Change Research is a C- pollster, it has not shown this big an advantage for Biden previously. Over the past few months, Biden’s margin in this poll has been in the +6 to +8 range. The YouGov poll was conducted before and after the debate, so it’s only of limited value in trying to figure out a polling bump for Biden from the debate. Ipsos and IBD/TIPP don’t help either since they average out more or less to the overall polling average going into the debate. Considering the news since the debate, it’s unlikely we’ll get a real sense of how the debate itself impacts polling. However, there may still be a few polls that were in the field between September 29th and October 1st that have not yet been reported.
Overall, Biden has steadily increased his lead over Trump over the past week. In fact, this has been happening for the past two weeks – since the time when a lot of folks were raising concerns about the race tightening. Biden’s polling average margin has gone up by two points since September 18th. What’s really getting interesting, however, is in the state polling.
State polls
If you have been paying attention to the forecasters out there this week, you’ll have noticed that just about every one of them has pushed the needle further towards Biden. For example, Cook Political Report, which is a more cautious forecaster than many others, moved Ohio and Iowa into the “Toss-Up” category. In the past week, there were four polls in Ohio. Fox News (A-), Quinnipiac (B+), and ALG Research (B/C) all found Biden leading the Buckeye State by anywhere from one to five points. Only SurveyMonkey (D-) found Trump leading there (+2). In Iowa, Monmouth (A+) and Data for Progress (B-) found Trump leading by about three points while Siena (A+) and RABA (B/C) found Biden leading by three points. The polling average in both states is essentially even (slight edge to Biden in Ohio and slight edge to Trump in Iowa).
Data for Progress (B-) surveyed a number of states this week with some interesting results. In South Carolina, Trump is up by just five points while GOP Senator Lindsey Graham is tied with Democrat Jaime Harrison. Biden is up by four points in Arizona and by 14 in Maine. In Senate races, DfP finds Democrats leading in Arizona (+9), Iowa (+2), and Maine (+8). Suffolk (A) released a poll today that also shows Democrat Mark Kelly leading the Senate race in Arizona by nine points.
Here’s the really interesting result from the past few days. RABA (B/C) has Democrat Theresa Greenfield leading GOP Senator Joni Ernst in Iowa by 12 points! It’s very exciting, but I am sorry to say this has to be an outlier. I was unable to find a polling memo for this poll. The only available information was through Iowa media reports. While very little information was available for the Senate results, there was more for the presidential results (which found Biden up by two points). According to reports, the poll found that Trump’s biggest support came from the youth vote. While that could be true in Iowa, it doesn’t pass the smell test. We’ll need more polling to confirm this before we can take the results seriously. Greenfield, who other pollsters have shown leading by as much as three points, does have a real shot at winning the Iowa Senate seat. But, if she wins by double digits, the Democrats are going to win more than a few Senate seats this year.
I want to invest in a House race. Any ideas?
Most forecasters see the Democrats picking up at least ten seats now. You will find them hemming and hawing about that a little – often falling back on a confident (and obvious) claim that the Democrats will at least hold their majority in the House. If you are interested in volunteering in one of the Trifecta Brief states, you’ll see what House races are important for Democrats to hold or win in each. But, there are two races right now where the polling shows you can make a difference with a contribution: NM-02 and AZ-06. The second CD in New Mexico is held by Democrat Xochitl Torres Small. She is facing a very competitive challenge from her Republican opponent. Polling this week shows Torres Small trailing her opponent by one point. In Arizona’s 6th CD, Dr. Hiral Tipirneni is trailing GOP Rep. David Schweiker by two points in another close race. Tirpirneni lost a close race in a neighboring district in 2018. There are some other races to consider as well, but that will have to wait for a future post. More polling should be in over the weekend and there are some other House-related issues to raise. Look for a House-centric post next week.