Don’t Trust the Early Polls: Trump is Still Screwed

A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Hillary and Trump dead even in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Another NBC News/Survey Monkey national poll showed Hillary holding a narrow 3-point lead over Trump. Is it time for all decent human beings in America to start thinking about maybe getting ready to…PANIC????

No. These stories about a tight national race make for compelling headlines, but there are many reasons why these polls should be taken lightly. Trump is still screwed.

It’s Still Really Early

Election Day is still more than 5 months away. These general election polls are testing a totally different audience than the primaries – the people getting surveyed by these early general election polls are part of a wider audience of the electorate that is not yet paying significant attention to the national election. There are still lots of undecided voters and not-yet-firmly committed voters – most people who are not degenerate political junkies like me are not really paying attention to the race yet; they’re just going about their lives and enjoying hobbies and spending time with their loved ones, instead of sitting in front of their computer screens until 3 a.m. in their underwear, unbathed, obsessively parsing poll results and analyzing voter totals from 2012 like, uh, me.

(Don’t be like me. I really don’t recommend it. Everyone thinks being a writer is this “cool” career, but it’s mostly a lot of sitting around the house feeling bad about yourself, having woefully inadequate personal hygiene, and getting hate mail.)

But anyway, as the election gets closer, Trump’s poll numbers are likely to drop and Clinton’s are likely to rise, because…

Hillary Has a Higher Ceiling Than Trump

Hillary is a polarizing figure and lots of people have complicated feelings about her. She’s not super-popular, to say the least. But even more people HATE Donald Trump; he is the most unpopular presidential candidate since David Duke. Compared to Donald Trump, Hillary is Jennifer Lawrence-meets-Mother Teresa. More people view Trump unfavorably than Hillary, and as Election Day gets closer, more people are going to be paying closer attention and are going to become ever-more-horrified that Donald Trump’s name is on the ballot for President of the United States. Politics is ultimately a popularity contest, and Trump is not popular enough to win in November.

Also, Hillary is a known quantity. She’s been in national politics for a long time and she’s already been attacked and criticized for years; everyone who hates Hillary has already hated her for a long time. There’s nothing new to say about her; if you don’t already hate Hillary, you’re probably not going to start hating her between now and November.

But Trump, on the other hand, has a much lower ceiling for how popular he’s going to be by November. He has much further to fall than Hillary; Trump’s about to get hammered by $1 billion of Democratic attack ads. Trump barely got attacked during the Republican primaries, because his opponents were cowardly morons who were all pathetically trying too hard not to alienate Trump’s raggedy band of disorderly idiots.

But in a general election, all of Trump’s blustery chest-thumping and blatant racism and casual misogyny that GOP primary voters love to hear is not going to fly—because general election voters are more diverse, more moderate, more intelligent and more sane than the GOP primary audience. Trump is the worst possible candidate for the GOP to put on the ballot in November. If the GOP primary is an all-male country club where you can get away with being boorish and obnoxious, the general election is a diverse public library, where you have to recognize that there are lots of perspectives in the room, and angry, entitled white male bullshit is not going to go over well.

And speaking of diversity…

Demographics are Destiny

Trump’s base of support is angry white people and a few self-loathing minority weirdos like Dr. Ben Carson, but fortunately, America is becoming less and less white. The 2016 election will have the most diverse electorate in history. America is no longer a country just for white people, where our national politicians can get away with ignoring minorities like they did during the days of Ronald Reagan. Non-white voters are going to make up the largest percentage of the electorate in history—31 percent of Nov. 2016 voters will be Black, Asian, Hispanic or other racial/ethnic minorities, up from 29 percent in 2012, and they’re not going to vote for an openly racist buffoon.

Also, even if Trump wasn’t such a bad candidate, the conditions for the general election are very favorable for the Democrats to hold on to the White House. The economy is in much better shape than it was 8 years ago, unemployment is at 5%, and President Obama has a high approval rating—the same country that just twice elected a black liberal intellectual is not going to suddenly turn around and elect an angry white nationalist who is proud of being ignorant and who has never served in public office before.

America has its problems, of course, but most Americans in 2016 are not as desperately furious and hell-bent on destruction as Trump’s voters would have us believe. All of the fundamentals of the general election still strongly favor the Democrats; a few early polls might make for big headlines but they don’t change the fact that Trump is deeply unpopular, his party is badly divided, and the non-white vote is going to go against him by overwhelming margins in November.

So, don’t overreact to national polls five-and-a-half months before Election Day. Many things are going to change between now and then, and most of them are not going to be good for Donald Trump. Have some faith in your fellow Americans! Yes, Donald Trump managed to win the nomination of the most willfully ignorant, idiotic, self-sabotaging major political party in modern U.S. history. We all underestimated just how willing the Republican Party was to douse itself in gasoline and light a match. But most Americans are better and smarter than GOP primary voters. Just because Trump appeals to the worst people in America doesn’t mean he’s going to get a majority of the vote in November. John McCain only won 45.7 percent of the popular vote in 2008, and I’ll bet Trump won’t even do that well. And according to this electoral vote projection map, based on the latest state-by-state polling, Hillary is already on track to win 251 electoral votes (just 19 away from winning the White House).

Ooh, and here’s an interactive electoral map so you can see what the Electoral College totals will be based on results in different states! Click on each state to predict which candidate will win, and then compare your projections with top political scientists! Isn’t democracy fun?? This is even better than filling out a March Madness bracket! (I have absolutely no life.)

So in conclusion: Trump is still going to lose, and I need to stop playing with interactive electoral college maps and go take a shower. Donald Trump is a loser, but so am I. But at least I have better hair.