Trump's 'culture war' is wildcard 100 days from election despite plummeting poll numbers

'We are looking at different polls, a different America, and different campaigns with different leaders,' Democratic pollster says

Donald Trump has divvied what chips he has left and placed them over just two squares on the roulette board, while Joe Biden casually nurses a drink nearby as his opponent falters with 100 days to go.

The casino metaphor, while cheeky, captures the current state of the 2020 US presidential election – its high stakes and all. But the president has a potential wildcard up his sleeve, and its suit is camouflage.

Poll after poll shows the incumbent struggling to tread water, with a double-digit deficit to make up nationally while losing key battleground states he won just four years ago. Women and senior voters, who joined his 2016 coalition, continue to flee in droves.

There is only one class in Washington less willing to rule out Mr Trump than Republican political operatives: Democratic ones. They routinely stop conversations about his plummeting polls and erratic behaviour by declaring they won't count him out a second time, no matter what the polls say. But one former adviser to Bill Clinton says Mr Biden's campaign and Democrats have a few reasons to breathe easier – or at least breathe every now and again.

"This moment is very different. To start, during the summer and fall of 2016, [Hillary] Clinton never had the kind of national poll lead that Biden now has. She led by an average of four points four months before the election, and the same four points just before Election Day," notes Stanley Greenberg, now a prominent Democratic pollster.

"This year, after Biden effectively clinched the nomination, he moved into an average six-point lead over Trump, which has grown to nearly 10 points after the death of George Floyd and the weeks of protests that have followed," according to Mr Greenberg. "The lingering apprehension among Democrats fails to recognise just how much the political landscape has changed since 2016. We are looking at different polls, a different America, and different campaigns with different leaders."

Speaking of polls, RealClearPolitics averaged several recent ones in both Florida and Pennsylvania, two states Mr Trump won last time and even his campaign aides back up Mr Greenberg's assessment. Its tabulation put Mr Biden ahead by 6.6 percentage points in the Keystone State and a commanding 7 points in the Sunshine State.

The president, who has moved his permanent residence to Florida, has acknowledged how important the state is to his re-election bid. One GOP strategist recently defined what's on the line there come Election Day.

"If you take Florida off the board, then for the president, it's game over. Florida is the whole ball game," the Republican strategist told The Independent. "We can talk about 'Trump is going to Georgia' or 'Trump is going to Pennsylvania again' or 'Trump is back in Wisconsin,' but the bottom line is simple: The focus for the president and his campaign has to be on Florida."

If true, Mr Biden might want to begin mapping out the early days of his presidency. That's because a Quinnipiac University survey released late last week put him ahead of Mr Trump by a staggering 13 points, 51 per cent to 38 per cent.

Even though the picture also looks bleak for Mr Trump in Wisconsin, where RealClear's average shows him down to Mr Biden by 6 percentage points, Republicans see the land of palm trees and Disney World as the key that unlocks a red southern wall. That's because, strategists say, if a message resonates there it likely will appeal to conservative and moderate voters in other Sun Belt swing states.

Mr Trump also has been losing senior voters and college-educated white voters who have been moving to southern and Sun Belt swing states but continued voting like they did up north.

To win back these voters, the president is placing a big bet on a revived economy and a fully approved and widely deployed coronavirus vaccine. Some experts say you can't have the former without the latter.

Mr Trump's chances are tied to both, and he appears to know it.

"We have an economy that's going to be booming. It's going to be a lot of jobs are being produced," Mr Trump said during a July 22 coronavirus briefing at the White House. "The last two months have been incredible.

"So I think we're going to have a great economy. You're going to have a fantastic next year. I think you're going to have a very good third quarter," he said, revealing his hopes for a boost just before voters head to voting booths across the country: "Actually, when the third quarter numbers come out. Interestingly, they'll be announced just before the election. They'll be announced around November 1st."

Election Day is just two days later.

The rest of the presidential chips lie over the coronavirus vaccine square. Like Florida and southern swing states, a vaccine could be the salve that heals his self-inflicted Covid wounds.

Mr Trump said last week he believes his administration, working with private firms, will "develop, manufacture, and distribute a vaccine in record-breaking time – really a very small fraction of the time, based on previous schedules".

After all, six in 10 Americans surveyed last week by ABC News and The Washington Post do not trust what he says about the virus outbreak. What's more, the same survey found only 38 per cent of all Americans approve of his virus response – down from 51 per cent in March. Disapproval of his response climbed 15 per cent over the same four-month stretch, to 60 per cent.

He knows the development of a vaccine could be the true deciding factor on whether he spends his days come late January golfing or presidenting. The chief executive has been nothing but prematurely congratulatory of those working day and night to inoculate the country: "I want to thank the FDA. I want to thank everybody involved. It's been an incredible process."

He seems to know that his eye-popping low coronavirus poll numbers are dragging down his approval rating, which Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution says is a strong indicator of what percentage of the popular vote an incumbent will draw on Election Day.

The Gallup organisation has been tracking presidential approval for decades. Its last measure of Mr Trump's was just 38 per cent, among the lowest levels of his term. Political strategists often caution that a chief executive's disapproval number likely is more telling for his political standing.

More bad news for the incumbent: 57 per cent of Americans are dissatisfied with how he is doing his job, according to Gallup.

But the gambling president appears to have one last wildcard up his sleeve: His deployment of federal law enforcement officers to major US cities to quell violence, some of which is linked to protests of black people being killed by white police officers. It's part of the "culture war" the president recently told an interviewer he believes the country is fighting, with itself.

"The president's only chance is to make this as divisive a culture war campaign as possible," Mr Galston said. "That's better than no strategy, which is where his campaign is right now."