According to Marquette’s latest polling out of Wisconsin, they have Hillary Clinton leading +7 among registered voters, but +9 among likely voters. They also have Russ Feingold leading the Senate race +4 among registered voters, but +9 again among likely voters.
Both Clinton and Feingold will win Wisconsin in November, but what’s interesting here isn’t that they’re winning a state they’re supposed to win but rather the gap between the registered and likely voter screens. In short, Democrats always do better among registered voters. We’re not the ones that have trouble getting out our voters. The likely voter screen always looks better for Republicans. Until now.
If you look at Marquette’s poll around the same time-frame in 2012, it had Barack Obama leading by 6 among likely voters, but by 14 among registered votes.
This is like flushing toilets suddenly reversing direction, or gravity working up instead of down. This doesn’t happen. But if anyone could defy the laws of physics, it would be Donald Trump. You may remember him as the guy who said today, “There's nobody who understands the horror of nuclear better than me," not even the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks. And now, he’s doing what no Republican before him has managed—suppress his own vote.
We’ve seen it in action these last two weeks. Every time he opens his trap, Democrats get more activated while you can feel Republicans deflate. That’s why no one bothers defending him, a phenomenon that hasn’t gone unnoticed:
The Curiel story made Trump’s already difficult task of lining up surrogates even harder, as supporters like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell distanced themselves from Trump’s remarks over the weekend.
With even early Trump backers like Rep. Chris Collins unwilling to defend his proposed Muslim travel ban or calls for mass deportations of illegal immigrants, the campaign is increasingly reliant on a small cast of mostly obscure figures to carry its message.
“It’s not a real surrogate operation,” the campaign source said. “They’re supporters. They’re not on there for their value or merit.”
And of course, you can see what the public thinks of it here, here, or here:
Trump is having a hard time getting out of the high 30s.
But while we knew Trump was faring poorly against Clinton—even though we’re still not at maximum party unity, and we knew that he’d spike turnout among Latinos and other key Democratic demographics—the idea that he might depress Republican turnout is new. Wisconsin may be a geographic outlier, or the poll might be off (it’s always dangerous to draw conclusions from a single poll). But if true, and if this becomes a nationwide trend, then we’re not talking about just a big victory or even wave year. We’re talking about a shellacking of historic proportions.
Remember, with Trump there is no “pivot.” He won’t learn to be a real candidate. He won’t start fundraising and building a field operation and hiring analytics gurus to maximize turnout. He is who he is, and if anyone points out that he’s a fucking moron for doing something, he just doubles down, because to do anything different is to admit defeat, and defeat is for losers.
Trump’s comments against the judge horrified many supporters, but the real estate mogul rebuffed efforts by campaign staff, donors and party officials to back off the incendiary claim this weekend, per sources, telling them he was unwilling to look like he had caved to pressure.
So instead of “caving,” he says fuck you all, I’m going to supersize my order!
So let’s do something fun this cycle—as we look at polls, let’s track the spread between likely and registered voters, and see if this becomes a thing. Because if it does, we’re in for an early Christmas this year.