“Get ready for a red wave,” is a common statement made every two to four years during the tense election seasons. It’s a trending hashtag, most conservative pages would be caught dead not predicting a red wave in an article or two. The biggest example of a red wave would be, without a doubt, 2016. Donald J. Trump swept battleground state after battleground state with nearly every poll indicating Hillary would win decisively. This indicates there was a wave of new voters not reached by pollsters, or in some cases, pollsters not polling areas previously inactive, that had major turnouts in 2016. For argument’s sake, here is a brief list of states that leaned or were predicted to vote Hillary in 2016; Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. Spoiler alert, none of these states swung towards Hillary Clinton.
There were a lot of issues with Hillary Clinton that sparked a red wave, to name a few; Benghazi and the disappearance of 30,000 potentially classified emails. This surge of new voters as previously stated, were not accounted for. Pollsters as of February this year have admitted they still aren’t accounting for ‘new most likely to vote’, or ‘uneducated Caucasian,’ and they are oversampling urban minorities and not counting suburban and rural minorities. That would indicate the polls this time around are going to show the same margin of error in Donald Trump’s favor. I’ve previously discussed, and if you haven’t read my article on Pennsylvania flipping red, it’s a great point that Republicans are gaining five times as many new voters as Democrats. There are reports that during the Republican National Convention, C-Span lines were being flooded with caller’s stating they are switching from Democrat to Republican and we hear stories every day where Democrats are tired of the current party platform and are jumping the metaphorical ship.
Nothing is guaranteed, these are just observations; Comparing polls between 2016 and 2020, I’m looking at battleground states, margin of error as well as the results. In Michigan 2016; Hillary Clinton was up 5% in the polls with a margin of error of 3%, however lost by less than a percent, with a swing of approximately 5.5%. In Michigan, current polls show Trump is ahead by 2% with a margin of error of 3%. Using historical data and the margins of errors, this could mean Trump wins Michigan from anywhere by 5% to 7.5% of the votes. If Donald Trump swings like he did in 2016, that means he could win by 7.5% to 9.5% of the votes.
Pennsylvania in 2016, Hillary was up 6% in the polls right before the election with a margin of error of 5.5%. Hillary continued to lose Pennsylvania by .7% of the votes, this is a swing of 6.2%. In Pennsylvania, Joe Biden is currently ahead in the most recent poll by 3% of ‘likely voters,’ with a very favorable margin of error of 1.4%. If Donald Trump swings 6.2% like he did in 2016, then he would have a decisive win by 4.8% of the votes, however it could be very narrow given the margin of error of 1.4%. Historically ‘likely voter’ polls have shown a larger margin of error than ‘most likely voter’ polls, so I don’t completely agree with CNBC’s judgement.
Wisconsin in 2016, Hillary was up decisively by 8% with a 2% margin of error. Hillary went on to lose Wisconsin by .7% of the vote, that is a swing of 9%. The most recent poll in 2020 has Donald Trump ahead of Biden by just 1% of the vote with a margin of error of 3%. This means Donald Trump could win by a staggering amount of 10% if pollsters get it wrong again, or win by as low as 4% of the votes.
Polls are always changing and very hard to predict; However Donald Trump is within the margin of error to win all of these states and possibly even take Minnesota. Donald Trump is filling stadiums with his enthusiasm, he beat the DNC viewership by nearly 20 million viewers, he raised 79 million during the RNC compared to Joe Biden raising only 70 million. I can confidently say there is a red wave based on the data we have and the polls we are seeing. We can only hope that our enthusiasm remains high into November so we keep the White House and retake the Congress.