As Biden leads a ‘stable race’ - is Trump poised for another surprise? | Analysis

‘You have to think about 2016 and look at this way: Trump has f***ed all of this stuff up, royally, but he’s only down by 9 points’

Political operatives on both sides see a stable race in which former Vice President Joe Biden has a significant lead on Donald Trump both nationally and in enough key swing states to win. So why does it feel like the president remains in position to secure a second term?

Mr Trump returned to the campaign trail on Tuesday, looking and sounding more like his old self than in recent months when he has questioned his low approval ratings and sometimes done more complaining about his own fate than trying to soothe an uneasy and divided country.

But he continues to campaign mostly on ominous warnings about what a Biden administration would do to the country, distorting what often-vague policy proposals the Democratic nominee has presented and painting an inaccurate picture of his own record since taking office. At several points during his Tuesday night rally in Winston-Salem in battleground North Carolina, Mr Trump very much appeared the underdog – but he also, for the first time, offered a clear picture of how he intends to run against Mr Biden.

Mr Trump’s main messages are that he is the “law-and-order” candidate, while the former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman supports “anarchists” and “rioters,” warning a Biden presidency would automatically bring violence to big cities and smaller ones like Winston-Salem.  

Here is the most succinct anti-Biden message Mr Trump has uttered yet on the campaign trail: “Joe Biden devoted his career to offshoring your jobs, throwing open your borders, dragging us into endless foreign wars, along with some of his other friends and surrendering our children's future to countries like China. Remember this, very simple to remember: if Biden wins, China wins. It's as simple as that.”

That biting attack line is vintage Trump. It’s also a sign he is finding his campaign legs just when he needs a sprint to the finish.

“Everyone is saying, ‘Well, Biden is up by 9 points, and I get why some people look at it and want to think Biden is going to win,” said one industry source who tracks political trends for his company’s clients. “But you can’t look at it that way. You have to think about 2016 and look at this way: “Trump has f***ed all of this stuff up, royally, but he’s only down by 9 points.”

Mr Biden, in contrast, mostly looks the part of the frontrunner – though he sometimes still makes potentially damaging verbal gaffes and opens the door for Mr Trump’s attacks about his age when he looks slightly confused during virtual events.

He has offered few of the deep policy proposals one should expect from an official who has held elected office in Washington for nearly 50 years, trying to stay attractive to right-leaning and moderate suburban voters while placating his party’s most liberal wing. The former vice president and longtime Delaware’s senator’s main message continues to be that Mr Trump is unfit for office and his presidency would be a return to relative calm and normalcy.  At a campaign stop in Michigan on Wednesday, Mr Biden said Mr Trump knows only how to “cheat” for his own personal benefit.

Both campaigns emerged from Labor Day and headed hard down the homestretch of what will be a lightning round of a campaign. They are both focusing on just a handful of states, so far. Those on both tickets and their top surrogates are, so far, targeting these key battlegrounds: Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina. The Trump campaign is ramping up its presence and efforts in Minnesota, but one Democratic strategist called that “a likely head fake", to get the Biden people to spend more there and less in Michigan and Pennsylvania. And Vice President Mike Pence will make a campaign stop next week in Ohio, with aides saying the Trump-Pence campaign is aiming more to shore up the Buckeye State than hold off Mr Biden there.

‘At the margins’

Even as Mr Trump has closed some ground in several battleground state polls and dominates news coverage because of the raucous and unplugged nature of his rallies, he has plenty of work to do.

“He has really only cut into Biden’s lead in the swing states that matter at the margins,” said James Manley, a Democratic strategist. “It is very likely a good thing if Democrats maintain a healthy scepticism, based on what happened in 2016. But I think the Biden campaign is in a really good place right now. They have to be confident two months from Election Day.”

Analysts at the independent forecasting organisation FiveThirtyEight have crunched polls conducted since both parties mostly virtual nominating conventions and concluded that “Joe Biden’s lead in national polls narrowed slightly since the Republican National Convention, but overall, polls show a relatively stable race.”

That is based, in part, on 100 simulations of the Trump-versus-Biden race the organisation has conducted. In 74 of them, Mr Biden was the winner.

NBC News earlier this week released an Electoral College map prediction that showed the Democrat cruising to a win with well over 300 votes – far more than the 270 needed to win.

Still, the president seems to realise he’s very much in striking distance, much like he was four years ago – albeit against a more popular foe in Mr Biden. That’s why he has cranked up the law-and-order rhetoric in an attempt to scare some crossover voters into thinking Mr Biden cannot stand up to the “looters.”

“And remember this: if Biden wins, the violent mobs, you see these mobs all over the place, they're Biden people. They're Biden states and cities,” Mr Trump said in Winston-Salem. “They're Democrat states. If they win, the mobs win.”