Just four months from the November elections, can Trump keep his winning coalition alive and secure a second term?

In the winter of 2017, days after the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, a fellow reporter traveling near Phoenix, Arizona, told me about a meeting with an elderly couple in a rural diner.

Like every winter, the couple had driven hundreds of miles from their home in Nebraska to enjoy the warm sunshine of Arizona. But this year, their mood was brighter.

Trump was the first presidential candidate they had supported since Ronald Reagan in 1984. This couple, like thousands of others who backed Trump in 2016, didn’t even register in the pre-election polling because they hadn’t voted in over 30 years.

The couple was representative of two demographic groups that helped Trump win in 2016. The first was non-college-educated white Americans, who defied conventional wisdom by favoring a millionaire real estate tycoon over Hilary Clinton by more than 30 percentage points. The second group consisted of seniors, generally a more conservative group of voters, who tilted to Trump by eight percentage points.

But even with these two groups clearing a potential path for victory, it wouldn’t have been enough for Trump to take the election. With young voters, women, and people of color generally favoring Clinton, Trump needed to win white college-educated voters as well, in particular, those who disliked Clinton. In the end, those voters, too, defied the punditry and broke for Trump by a margin of four percentage points, according to the Pew Research Center.

2016 vs. 2020

The question is: How do these voters feel today? Just four months from the November elections, can Trump keep his winning coalition alive and secure a second term?

Given that his 2016 margins in crucial states were so slim (11,000 votes in Michigan, 23,000 votes in Wisconsin, and 54,000 votes in Pennsylvania), any decline in President Trump’s support among these three groups will seriously jeopardize a second term. While Mr. Trump still leads among white voters without a college degree by 21 points on average, recent polls have shown his margins slipping in these three key demographics.

Take seniors, for instance. In Florida — a state with a huge aging population — people aged 65 and over made up 20 percent of those who voted in 2016, according to exit polls. Trump carried Florida by a razor-thin margin of 1.2 percent in 2016.

However, recent polls show him trailing in the sunshine state by an average of seven percentage points. His diminished standing in Florida seems, in large part, to stem from sagging numbers among the state’s senior population. Mr. Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has boosted the prospects of his current opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, among senior voters who are naturally more concerned with their health. In a recent TIPP Florida poll, Biden led Trump by nine points among older voters, a mirror image of the national senior vote in 2016.

The president’s numbers are also slipping among white voters with and without a college degree. Recent polling shows a decline of approximately ten percent among white voters generally. Moreover, these polls show that white voters have a greater affinity for Biden than they had for Clinton four years ago.

A case in point is Macomb County, Michigan, known as the home of the “Reagan Democrats” (suburban white Democratic voters who crossed party lines to support Ronald Reagan in the 1980s), who twice voted for Barack Obama only to support Trump in 2016. In Macomb County, Clinton barely beat her rival, Bernie Sanders, in the Democratic primary in 2016. Biden, on the other hand, won both the state of Michigan and Macomb County by double digits earlier this year, effectively terminating Sanders’s campaign for president.

Biden’s primary victories, of course, may or may not translate on election day, but they do demonstrate his appeal among white voters. Biden’s chances have been further strengthened by endorsements like that of Michael Taylor, the Republican mayor of Sterling Heights, Michigan’s fourth-largest city.

Women Like Joe

Among female voters, Trump’s sinking popularity is even more striking. Biden is now leading Trump by 25 percent among women, according to an analysis by the New York Times’s Nate Cohn. That’s a wider gap than in 2016, when Hillary Clinton went into election day leading Trump by 14 points. In other words, more women are inclined to support Biden than Clinton, the first female presidential candidate representing a major party. In fact, Biden’s advantage with women voters is the highest since 1952, CNN reported. Among men, Cohn found, Trump maintains a six-point edge over Biden.

No MAGA, No Problem?

Will it be enough for Biden to reenter the White House? It is hard to know.

Trump still has many assets that could help him win reelection. He is a better speaker than Biden and a more energetic and passionate campaigner. As well, his supporters are more committed to his success and will likely turn out in huge numbers in November. So, yes, Trump has plenty of time to bounce back. Encouraging news on a COVID-19 vaccine, better employment numbers, and a bumble or two by Biden on the campaign trail could help Trump mobilize undecided voters and bring them back “home.”

But he also faces a significant challenge: Trump is particularly effective in firing up his base at mass rallies. By now, we have all seen the overflow crowds that come to hear Trump blast the Democratic leadership, the media, and the political opponent of the day. Many of these people travel hours and spend an entire day waiting in line to see the president.

But with the COVID-19 pandemic still lingering (and in some places worsening) many will likely stay away from Make America Great Again rallies and watch Trump from a distance. Last weekend’s rally in Tulsa, which Trump campaign officials had hyped as the beginning of his reelection campaign, could not even fill a 20,000-capacity arena. That’s a serious blow as Trump seeks to build momentum toward November.

But the same disadvantage could hinder Biden. If the 2020 campaign turns out to be an online contest, then Trump possesses a strong digital team. Trump shocked the world in 2016, and it’s not far-fetched to imagine he could do the same in 2020.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 816)