According to a new Poll from WaPo/ABC if the 2016Â election was held again today not only would Trump win but he would win by a larger margin.
It has been almost exactly one year since President Trump shocked the world by defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. And he might well do it again today.
Confronted with the events of the past 12 months and even Trump’s unprecedented unpopularity — 59 percent disapprove of his presidency — a new poll shows that 2016 voters look as though they’d still pick Trump, albeit about as narrowly as they did before.
The Washington Post-ABC News poll asked respondents how they’d vote in a redo of the 2016 election, and, if anything, Clinton seems to have lost more ground than Trump. Among those who voted, 46 percent say they picked Clinton last year and 43 percent picked Trump — a slightly more favorable sample than the 2016 election, in which Clinton won the popular vote by two percentage points. But in a head-to-head rematch, Clinton’s support drops even more than Trump’s does, and they wind up in a 40-40 tie. Given that Trump overperformed in key, blue-leaning swing states, that means he’d probably have won again.
This poll is a poll that all Republicans must pay a lot of attention too. This poll gives us the blueprint for what we must do to not only win in 2018 but again in 2020. Here are my major takeaways.
The majority of Americans don’t hate Trump:
The media paints the picture that America doesn’t like Donald Trump. They throw his approval rating around like it matters. News Flash, it doesn’t. The entirety of our government has a lower approval rating than Trump(people are just frustrated with Washington in general). By looking at the numbers we see that Americans don’t actually hate him.
Interestingly, Clinton actually seems to have lost that ground because of disillusioned Democrats. Even as the Trump presidency has unified the Democratic Party against him and his policies, just 72 percent of Democrats said they would vote for Clinton in a rematch — vs. the 84 percent who said they did vote for Clinton last year. Trump’s share of the Republican Party, meanwhile, dropped just five points from 89 percent who said they did vote for him to 84 percent who said they would do it again.
(Almost all of the Democrats who would no longer vote for Clinton would opt for a third choice — 9 percent go to Gary Johnson, Jill Stein or someone else — while the others would not pick a candidate. Trump does not pick up any of this support)
Clinton also loses 10 points in terms of support from nonwhite voters. While 64 percent say they voted for her, just 54 percent said they would do so in a rematch.
If the media’s narrative was correct then these people would never have voted for Trump. It is clear from this poll that Trump has the power, and still has the power to turn Democrats and independents to his side.
The passing of Trump’s agenda will win him re-election:
This poll shows me that if Trump can pass his agenda he can win re-election. As we pointed out above Trump is the only Republican candidate with the ability to reach across the aisle and grab voters. The only way he does this is on his agenda. Tax Reform, Healthcare and immigration reform including the border wall will all lead to a Trump Re-election in 2020.
