Despite Clinton Surge, Trump Can’t Be Written Off; His Support Is From Below

As most commentators have noted, this US Presidential election is Hillary Clinton’s to lose even now. According to RealClearPolitics.com’s (RCP’s) poll averages, Clinton is a full three percentage points ahead of Donald Trump (as on 6 November), with 47.2 per cent of the popular vote (versus Trump’s 44.2 percent).

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com now says “Clinton has a 70 percent chance of winning the election…That’s up from a 65 percent chance on Sunday night, so Clinton has had a good run in the polls in the final days of the campaign. Clinton’s projected margin of victory in the popular vote has increased to 3.5 percent from 2.9 percent.”

But one can’t be sure, for this election season has seen Trump repeatedly come up from far behind to close the gap after seeming like a no-hoper for his wayward comments on war heroes, women and Hispanics, among others.

Since the US President is elected not on the basis of the total popular vote, but votes in the electoral college, the actual winner will be decided by how Trump fares in seven or eight battleground states, including Florida (now leaning marginally towards Trump), Arizona (Trump), Nevada (Trump), Michigan (Clinton), New Hampshire (Clinton), Colorado (Clinton), North Carolina (Trump), Ohio (Trump), et al.

The job is easier for Clinton, for she must only win one or two toss-up states, while Trump must win them all, unless he pulls off an upset in states considered safe for Clinton (like Pennsylvania).

RCP puts the current electoral college breakup as 203 for Clinton, 171 for Trump, and 164 tossups. With no tossup states, Clinton wins by a narrow 272-266 margin in electoral votes. This election may thus be literally decided by one small state swinging the unexpected way.

This election is unusual for one simple reason: despite repeated gaffes and politically incorrect rhetoric, Trump has repeatedly bounced back. If one looks at the RCP poll average from early 2016 to now, Trump didn’t even look like a challenger to Clinton in March (with the vote gap being 50-39, and the Republican nomination yet to be decided clearly). But by May, Trump surged marginally ahead, only to lose it again (46-39) in June. He soared ahead in July during the Republican convention, but slipped in August (47-39) when he derided a Muslim war hero who died in Iraq. He caught up again (45-44) in September, only to lose the lead again in October when his “locker room” video made the rounds (49-42).

In the first week of November, he closed the gap again when the FBI said it was looking into some new emails, but the gap widened to 3 percent after the FBI clarified that there was not much in the emails to suggest wrongdoing. (See the repeated surge and drop in the Clinton-Trump poll averages over 2016 here).

What this pattern shows is not just that Trump is his own worst enemy, but that his repeated surges are driven from below. It is the American people – especially the White male voter – who is refusing to give up on Trump merely on the basis of his personal failings.

Put another way, the Trump surge is structural, and not an endorsement of him personally.

In previous elections, one single gaffe has often been enough to derail or eliminate candidates in primaries or even the presidential elections. But this time it is different. The pressure for change is bottom up. Otherwise a seriously flawed candidate like Trump would not bob up repeatedly despite making the wrong moves or statements.

Nor is it possible to say that Clinton is winning because Trump looks worse.

The fact is Clinton represents the establishment, the status quo. And the status quo is what a large segment of the White population wants to change.

While demography – the Hispanic vote, the women vote – may indeed trip Trump, one cannot be sure this will happen when the surge is from below.

Leaders are made not from the top but by the effective articulation of the unstated needs of the voter. This is what explains the Trump phenomenon more than anything else. The voter is ignoring Trump the misogynist/racist/demagogue because it wants to see him as Trump, the Scourge of the Establishment.

He may not turn out to be any such thing if elected, but that is another story.