Lawless: Nobody is Looking to Biden for Vision of Future & Why That Could Help Him
Saturday, July 25, 2020
University of Virginia Political Science Chair Jennifer Lawless spoke with GoLocal about the most recent polling numbers in the 2020 presidential election — and how a race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden is markedly different than Trump’s contest against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“It’s not only national head to head polls where Trump is down, he’s also trailing Biden significantly in many of the states he won in 2016. So if Trump can’t win Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and then loses states like Florida, Ohio, and perhaps Georgia, there’s no path to 270 electoral votes,” said Lawless.
“So I’m more concerned, or if I were a member of the Trump team I would be more concerned about [Biden's] double-digit leads in a lot of those swing states more than the national polls,” she added.
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“The lead Clinton had [four years ago] was only about half as large as Biden’s now — it had been durable and she had been leading the whole time but it’s important to keep in mind that the difference between Clinton and Trump was also masked by the fact that people didn’t like Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, so some of Trump’s support was anti-Clinton support,” said Lawless. “Whereas this time around, independents who are inclined to vote for a Democrat don’t have those same kinds of arguments about Joe Biden. “
“So I would be more concerned if I were Donald Trump not only because of these numbers but also because he’s not going to be able to rally as much support in opposition to his opponent as he was in 2016,” she added.
“I think that when people think about Biden they do think about the Obama Administration, so basically what this election is going to come down to is Trump versus the Obama administration,” said Lawless.
“Nobody is looking to Joe Biden for the vision of the future,” she said. “I think the question is do you want to continue with the Trump Administration and four more years of this, or do you want to reset and basically go back to what we knew we had before Trump was elected — and that’s what Biden represents.”
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