By Kristen “Super Crip” Milefchik
Living in 2020 is like someone made a motion picture out of Munch’s “The Scream.” We are in a state of suspended animation, characterized by unparalleled levels of anxiety and uncertainty. In addition to a pandemic that looks less and less likely to ever cease, we have a violent political climate that is fueled by a divisive, fascist dictator that is now threatening to hijack the election. If the polls are accurate, most Americans want the dictator-in-chief OUT. November third has come to signify not just the right for Americans to cast a ballot, but the potential to end the nightmare of our current reality.
Judging from the poor reaction to Trump’s now infamous tweet, even from staunch Republican allies like Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi, Trump would never get away with such blatant electoral malpractice as delaying the election. Yet, a deeply foreboding CNN news interview with Rich Thau indicated that despite Biden’s high lead in polls, there is still strong evidence of Trump support among swing voters.
Watching this interview on CNN sent me into a panic because even though I’ve vowed not to let the polls lull me into a false sense of security, as the 2016 election should have taught us all not to do, the margin of Biden’s lead even in battleground states has made me, admittedly, cautiously optimistic. Hearing that the swing voter focus groups that Thau has been studying are still strongly favoring Trump, therefore, was like coasting along in my power wheelchair only to have it unexpectedly stop and lurch me forward so hard that I was hanged from the waist on the edge of my seat by my seat belt. I scurried to find more information about Mr. Thau’s focus groups in order to catch my breath and regain my composure.
I first found an opinion piece Mr. Thau had also written for CNN that discussed his research surrounding the so-called “Swing Voter Project” which follows political thought patterns of swing voter focus groups from areas such as Canton, Ohio; Davenport, Iowa; Erie, Pennsylvania; and my notoriously conservative, Detroit suburb neighbor, Macomb County, Michigan. I also found the website for Engagious, “the industry leader in scientifically testing and refining the effectiveness of business and issue-advocacy messaging,” co-founded by Thau, where one can actually watch the video interviews with the Michigan swing voters that belong to these focus groups. Thau explained that focus groups “are early-detection systems of shifting public opinion” and that, “before something important appears in polling, it often bubbles up first in focus.” If this group of people is truly indicative of a broader public opinion shift, we need to be terrified.
I could barely stomach watching the videos I did as it felt too close to watching interviews of attendees of a Trump rally. All the Michigan focus group members were white and they all had the responses you’d expect from a Trump supporter – banning the Confederate flag or taking down Confederate monuments is bad because it’s “destroying” history to do so; Biden has dementia and is “a puppet” for wearing a mask; and protestors are all dangerous, violent, looters who are destroying our cities. I’m not going to bother to fact check or argue any of this nonsense because we are already aware of the Trump cult’s decision-making processes being founded on ignorance and fear. Citing facts and logical contradictions to their beliefs would be a futile waste of my energy. Notwithstanding. that’s precisely why Thau’s findings worry me.
Thau contends:
“These voters may sound like typical Fox News watchers, but, significantly, the overwhelming majority are not. Many are, instead, people who get their news disproportionately from local television, regional websites and Facebook. Compared to the kinds of people who seek out news from national cable channels, many swing voters reside in a national politics desert.”
Thau’s explanation for the troubling ignorance of these swing voters is not just a biased national news source, but a complete lack of one. He further states, “For those of us who follow politics closely, my admonition is: Pay a lot of attention to those voters who don’t pay much attention at all. They may be telling us something very important.” Well how the hell are we supposed to do that?! Form more Facebook groups that they will block and ignore as soon as they see it’s not pro-Trump?
It’s astonishing that we have to worry about a sliver of voters living in non-reality la-la-land tipping the electoral vote in favor of a president whose own party leaders can’t even back anymore. On the other hand, in my quest for some bit of comforting news, I came across a political scientist with an entirely different take on the significance of swing voters. Her name is Rachel Bitecofer and she forecasted the 2018 midterm election with shocking accuracy, especially considering most of her forecasting colleagues got it completely wrong and weren’t as bold as Bitecofer who predicted a precise number of Democratic seats to be taken in the House rather than a range. Her prediction, 42, was only off by one seat. What’s special about Bitecofer, though, isn’t just this remarkable forecasting success, but the entirely different theory on which she based it. Bitecofer, you see, doesn’t think swing votes matter.
A Politico article entitled, “An Unsettling New Theory: There Is No Swing Voter” discusses Bitecofer’s self-described political forecasting approach as “flipping giant paradigms of electoral theory upside down.” Bitecofer doesn’t believe that election results really have much to do with voters changing their mind, or swing votes, as it does voter turnout and who decides to vote in the first place, hence, who is entering and exiting the electorate. She also sees the era of political polarization and “negative partisanship” as factors that are more responsible for how people vote and who shows up than who the party’s candidate is. Like a team sport, she sees Democratic and Republican coalitions competing for their “team” and when an issue ignites the attention of their specific coalition, it ignites voter turnout and heightens the chance of their party winning. Some of these coalitions are, for example, people of color, college-educated whites and people in metropolitan areas on the left; and mostly noncollege whites, with a smattering of religious-minded voters, financiers and people in business, largely in rural and exurban counties on the right. Black Lives Matter is a current movement that would, obviously, activate the Democratic POC coalition of voters. Trump’s poor response to the pandemic is also activating college-educated whites, another Democratic-based coalition who values scientific, academic opinion.
If you compared Trump’s behavior over the last 3.5 years to professional basketball, you could say he’s made a series of reprehensible technical fouls that are so shameful, so cringe-worthy, even Republican coalitions are beginning to join the chorus of boos. The “Never Trump” Republicans are gaining more and more traction, which means even more left leaning Independents will be joining the electorate as a Democratic vote.
I’m not a political forecaster by any means whatsoever and I can’t feign confidence when 2016 (and everything we’ve had to endure since) went so far in the opposite direction of what I hoped for. However, as far as I understand it, Ms. Bitecofer is still planning on a giant blue wave come November. With 270 electoral votes needed to win, Bitecofer predicts a 318 Democrat to 125 Republican landslide victory in the 2020 election. I’m going to consider her midterm forecast success a reason to put faith into her model. I need to cling to every bit of hope there is, that this nightmare will all be over with soon.
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