The Note: On election eve, Trump needs disruptions to pull off win

The Trump campaign needs the polls -- virtually all of them -- to be wrong.

By
Rick Klein
 and
MaryAlice Parks
November 2, 2020, 6:02 AM ET
8 min read

The TAKE with Rick Klein

The ultimate disruptor needs one last shocker.

That can happen in one of two ways for President Donald Trump -- one in a scenario that would play out in the hours before Tuesday night, the other immediately after.

The bottom line that both parties acknowledge: The Trump campaign needs the polls -- virtually all of them -- to be wrong. They need the images of massive crowds to translate into an Election Day army at the polls, to wipe out the advantage that former Vice President Joe Biden has almost certainly built up as early voting smashes new records.

As for the other way, Trump senior adviser Jason Miller offered a hint on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. Miller said -- without evidence, and quite implausibly -- that the president would be "over 290 electoral votes on election night."

"So no matter what they tried to do, what kind of hijinks or lawsuits or whatever kind of nonsense they try to pull off, we're still going to have enough electoral votes to get President Trump reelected," Miller said.

Given the president's repeated assertions that a winner needs to be determined on Nov. 3 -- "that's the way it's been and the way it should be," Trump said Sunday -- Miller is strongly suggesting that the campaign would rely on incomplete voting results to suggest that the race is over. A legal strategy of seeking to disqualify uncounted votes could follow.

Several states -- Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan among them -- are unlikely to tabulate early votes promptly on election night, meaning initial results may favor Trump, perhaps misleadingly. Media organizations, including ABC News, will not make projections without far more data than is likely to be released before midnight.

A premature declaration of victory has no force of law, of course. But it may mark the ultimate test of a political system that Trump has sought to disrupt, time and again.

The RUNDOWN with MaryAlice Parks

This election could be the first time the size of the millennial vote surpasses that of Gen X. While millennials are leery of party identification, they are more likely to call themselves liberal. In 2016, they were also more likely to vote third party. Should their rate of turnout more closely match the national average, the change could be enough to swing the race and cement some serious generational turnover in U.S. politics.

Close attention will also be given to the even younger voters. Voters under 30 years old have suggested in polls that they are ready and eager to vote at record-breaking rates.

A study back in September from NYU found that voter registration among 18- to 24-year-olds was up 34% in Georgia compared to September four years ago -- and up nationwide too.

In the early voting numbers coming in, voters between 18-29 and between 30-39 have all increased their share of the total vote compared to 2016.

Still, casting that ballot could prove difficult for many young voters -- especially college students used to voting near campus. So many students studying remotely adds a layer of challenges for voting.

Two years ago, students led stunning protests around the country demanding gun safety reform. From climate change to teacher pay, young people have been visibly active in politics and socially engaged at high levels during this administration -- a fact only super-charged with George Floyd’s death and the powerful push for racial justice that followed this summer. But, as always, will activism translate to votes?

The TIP with Kelsey Wash and Adam Kelsey

As 93 million people have cast their ballots early this election, the United States has seen unprecedented turnout -- but the turnout has not made waves in every state.

According to the United States Elections Project, voters nationally have cast 67.7% of the total votes cast in the 2016 general election. In three Southern battleground states, the early voter turnout is historic. In-person voting has since concluded in the Southern states, although voters can still participate in the early vote with absentee mail-in voting.

According to data presented by Target Early, Texas has surpassed the total vote in the 2016 general election, with voters casting 106.6% of the total votes counted in the 2016 general election. Georgians have cast 92.6% of the total vote counted in 2016, and Floridians have cast 85.8%. Across the nation, 45 states plus D.C. allow for voters to vote by mail with an excuse or allow voters to use COVID-19 as an excuse. Texas does not allow mail-in absentee voting unless a voter has an excuse beyond coronavirus concerns, so the historic early turnout could result in voters wary of Election Day's single-day turnout in the middle of a pandemic. The large early vote could also be a result of energized Southern voters.

In contrast, Northern battleground states did not see a large influx of early voting. In the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, only 37.2% of the total vote counted in the 2016 general election has been cast -- possibly suggesting that many Pennsylvanians are undecided or will decide in the final days. In Michigan, the state has seen 54.6% of total votes cast in 2016 election, while Wisconsin has seen 61%.

ONE MORE THING

The pandemic versus the economy defines the presidential contest in two key battlegrounds, with Florida holding firm to its toss-up status while Joe Biden leads slightly in Pennsylvania in the season's final ABC News/Washington Post polls. There's little change in either state. In Florida, Donald Trump has 50% support among likely voters to Biden's 48%; it was 51%-47% in an ABC/Post poll Sept. 20. Trump won the state by 112,911 votes out of more than 9.4 million cast in 2016. In Pennsylvania, the race stands at 51%-44%, Biden-Trump, a 7-point advantage for the Democrat; that compares with a 9-point margin late last month. Here, Trump's 2016 win was even narrower: 44,292 votes out of nearly 6.2 million cast.

THE PLAYLIST

ABC News' "Start Here" podcast. Monday morning's episode features ABC News' Molly Nagle and Will Steakin, who discuss how President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are campaigning one day before the election. ABC News Chief Legal Analyst Dan Abrams brings us the latest on a legal fight over curbside voting in Texas. And Georgetown Law professor Mary McCord tells us what we need to know about voter intimidation at the polls. And, in a bonus episode this weekend, ABC News President James Goldston goes one-on-one with Brad Mielke to discuss how ABC News is handling its live coverage amid unprecedented concerns about how votes will be counted. And Dan Merkle, the executive director of elections at ABC News, pulls back the curtain on how results are reported. http://apple.co/2HPocUL

FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. Many pollsters released their final polls of the 2020 election over the weekend, including a Des Moines Register poll that showed President Trump leading by 7 points in Iowa and a set of New York Times polls that showed Joe Biden ahead in four key swing states. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew analyzes what the recent data tells us about the state of the race in its final days. They also discuss the Trump campaign's efforts to undermine the legitimacy of a potential Biden win by suggesting that the partial ballot counts available on election night should determine the winner, rather than waiting for all votes to be counted in the days or weeks after Nov. 3. https://53eig.ht/34C5CsY

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

  • FiveThirtyEight's editor-in-chief Nate Silver appears on ABC's "The View."
  • President Donald Trump holds a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, at 11:30 a.m. and delivers remarks in Avoca, Pennsylvania, at 2 p.m. Later, he travels to Traverse City, Michigan, to hold a rally at 5 p.m. He holds an event in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at 7 p.m. CT, and delivers remarks in Grand Rapids, Michigan at 10:30 p.m.
  • Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a campaign event in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, at 11:30 a.m. and attends a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, at 2 p.m.
  • First lady Melania Trump delivers remarks at a campaign rally in Huntersville, North Carolina, on Monday at 4 p.m.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks in Cleveland then travels to Beaver County, Pennsylvania, to host an event with union members and labor leaders. He'll then attend a drive-in event in Pittsburgh with African American community members and later hold a campaign drive-in event in Pittsburgh.
  • Jill Biden kicks off canvassing in Erie, Pennsylvania, attends a rural get-out-the-vote event in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, and later joins a get-out-the-vote event in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, with suburban women. She'll also participate in a drive-in event in Pittsburgh with her husband.
  • Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., kicks off canvassing in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, at 11:20 a.m., attends a Latino get-out-the-vote event in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, at 1:05 p.m., and holds a drive-in event in Philadelphia at 7 p.m.
  • Doug Emhoff kicks off canvassing in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at 11:30 a.m., then drops by a Veterans for Biden volunteer event in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. He holds a get-out-the-vote event in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, at 3 p.m. and in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, at 4 p.m. He also joins the drive-in event in Philadelphia at 7 p.m. with his wife.

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