michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: The majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump. Nate Cohn on why, in 2020, Democrats will still have such a hard time defeating him. It’s Wednesday, July 24. Nate, I’ve noticed on Twitter that people are kind of mad at you, and it’s only July of 2019.

nate cohn

They are. They are.

michael barbaro

I think you should consider pacing yourself.

nate cohn

I should consider what?

michael barbaro

Pacing yourself.

nate cohn

Oh, pacing myself. Yeah, that would probably be best for my mental health.

michael barbaro

Give us, Nate, the top-line summary of what you reported last week, the thing that riled up a few people.

nate cohn

So basically, the president’s approval ratings are under water nationwide, which means that there are more people who disapprove of the president than who approve of him. But despite that, the president is better positioned to win re-election than the national polls suggest, because he is stronger in critical battleground states than he is nationwide. And, in fact, his position in the battleground states with respect to the country is even better than it was in 2016, when he was able to win the presidency while losing the national vote by two points. So it allows for the possibility that the president could win the Electoral College and therefore the presidency, while losing the national vote by an even wider margin than he did in 2016.

michael barbaro

How exactly does that work?

nate cohn

It works because of the Electoral College. And in most states, Electoral College votes are awarded on a winner-take-all basis. So what that means is that if the president can barely hold on to a bunch of states, he gets the same number of Electoral College votes as he would if he had won them by a lot.

michael barbaro

So despite the fact that the president’s approval ratings are quite low, there is not only a clear potential path to re-election for him, he could actually do better than he did in 2016, and that’s because of voters in certain states with a lot of Electoral College votes.

nate cohn

I think the way I would frame it is not that he could do better than 2016. I mean, he could. He could do better or worse. But he would have a better chance to win at a greater deficit in the popular vote.

michael barbaro

It would be a potentially more confounding style of victory.

nate cohn

Potentially, yeah.

michael barbaro

Now I can see why people are mad.

nate cohn

I can understand too. And it’s particularly frustrating, I think, for some people, because the president’s approval ratings are bad in the critical states like Wisconsin or in Florida or in Pennsylvania. So I’m not trying to say that the president is especially well positioned to win re-election or something. I’m pretty agnostic on whether he’s a favorite or not, but he has this important advantage in the Electoral College that gives him a better shot to win than you would think.

michael barbaro

Got it. You’re just looking at the numbers.

nate cohn

Just looking at the numbers.

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michael barbaro

O.K., so let’s get into this, because it does feel kind of complicated. You keep talking about the president’s approval ratings. Why are you looking at those? How do those help you come to this conclusion about his chances in 2020?

nate cohn

So the president’s approval rating is the best measure of his standing by state, and historically, it’s a good proxy for how people ultimately vote in the general election. And what the data shows when you break it down by state is that the president is holding up relatively well in several states in the Rust Belt. States like Minnesota and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, traditionally white, working-class battleground states, those are states that Democrats used to be able to count on in presidential elections. Trump won several of those states and was much better than prior Republican candidates, and as a result, he was able to flip them and won the presidency. And although he’s lost a lot of ground in Sun Belt states like Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Florida that are traditionally quite Republican, he hasn’t lost so much ground there that they represent a great option for Democrats instead. The Sun Belt has not emerged as a great alternative to Democrats if they can’t hold the Rust Belt states, and that leaves the traditional white, working-class battleground states at the center of the electoral map, and where the president has a relative advantage compared to the country.

michael barbaro

O.K., so let’s focus on the Rust Belt. Which states are you focused on right now where the president could pull off this Electoral College victory despite a popular vote loss?

nate cohn

I think Wisconsin is at the center of things. One way to look at it is that in 2016, it was what we call the tipping-point state of the election.

michael barbaro

Which means what?

nate cohn

It means that if Hillary Clinton had won every state that’s more Democratic than Wisconsin, that Wisconsin then would have been the critical state to decide the election. It would have put her over the top. In our analysis, it still holds that distinction. If the president wins every state where his approval rating is better than Wisconsin, his re-election would then come down to winning that state and that state alone. In our analysis, the president’s approval rating in Wisconsin is probably above 47 percent — the good news for Democrats, which is that that’s under 50. The bad news is that that is appreciably better than the president’s approval rating nationwide, and it’s not that far away from what the president would need to win.

michael barbaro

So who are these Wisconsin voters who may very well determine the outcome of the election? What can you tell us about them?

nate cohn

I think the most important observation about them is that they are white and they are likelier to be working class. So, overall —

michael barbaro

Likelier than the rest of —

nate cohn

Likelier than the country. So overall, white, working-class voters are about half of the electorate in Wisconsin. They are about 40 percent nationwide. So that’s a real disadvantage for Democrats, and there are very few of the sort of populations that are helping Democrats more and more, like a growing Hispanic population. So if the president wins Wisconsin, he’s a very clear favorite to win. There are ways around that, but it’s a simple and reasonable way to look at it this point. And I think that there are two halves to his strategy. One is to hold the white, working-class voters who voted for him last time. There is evidence that some of these voters have soured on him, but this is the president’s relative strength, is winning working-class whites. He’s got a playbook for doing it with immigration, et cetera. And then the other half of his playbook is to at least hold the Milwaukee suburbs and potentially even gain there. This is a conservative region. This is a place where Mitt Romney won by 30 points. This is Scott Walker country. This is where Paul Ryan represents. And these sort of establishment Republicans were not happy with the president’s campaign in 2016. I think a lot of them were relatively unlikely to turn out, vote for a third party, in some cases perhaps even cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton. But they’re conservative, and they’ve probably watched President Trump govern as a conservative in the sort of ways that they like there. They’ve seen him appoint conservative justices. They’ve seen him cut taxes. They’ve seen him try and repeal Obamacare. In large parts of the country, this doesn’t help him very much. But in a true Republican area, maybe it actually works to his advantage and helps him bring back some of the people who were never along with him in the first place.

michael barbaro

So you’re saying that Trump could win by winning these white, working-class voters and more educated white voters in Wisconsin. And, in fact, it’s looking like he may very well do both.

nate cohn

Right. If he checks both boxes on white, working-class and Milwaukee, he’s in.

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michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. So Nate, one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you is because of these tweets that President Trump sent last week about the four progressive congresswomen, telling them to go back to the countries from which they came. I watched that and asked myself, how is that not a bad idea? It looks like a very bad idea. I understand in 2016 that that kind of messaging worked, but I thought one of the big lessons of the 2018 midterms was that once that kind of messaging became the way the president actually governed for two years, some of his voters said, I don’t really want that, and they voted for Democrats in Congress, and the House flipped to Democrats. So the reason I wanted to talk to you is because I’m trying to make sense of how it could possibly be a good idea for the president to double down on that inflammatory strategy again heading into 2020, if we’ve learned that it can cost the president key votes that got him elected in 2016 and that got Democrats elected in 2018.

nate cohn

These white, working-class voters that we’ve been talking about — not necessarily the ones in Milwaukee, to be sure, but the white, working-class ones — part of the reason why they broke for the president in the first place in 2016 was because of his pitch on cultural issues. They are against immigration. They support a border wall. They like guns. They think we should get tough on China. There’s a lot of his playbook that they really do buy into, even though they have traditionally been Democratic voters. But I wouldn’t argue that the president is necessarily doing himself any favors with his particular tactics right here. These tweets may not be productive at all. I guess I would analogize it more to being a bad version of maybe a good strategy. Trying to polarize the electorate along racial lines does help the president in a white state like Wisconsin. This particular way of doing it may not work out for him. It’d be like if I told you that for a football team to win, they need to pass the football more, and then this might have been an interception. But in general, this idea that the president should be throwing the ball down the field may be what he needs to do to win over the long run.

michael barbaro

But it seems like the president’s strategy, even if it was a better version, in your words, could end up alienating those more educated voters in a place like Milwaukee, which you said he needs to win to get the states. So it still confuses me a little bit.

nate cohn

That’s right. There’s a real downside of risk for the president with the sort of approach that he’s taken here. I think that there’s a version of President Trump who could have 55 percent approval rating right now by riding the economy. That’s not the version that we have right now, to be sure.

michael barbaro

Because of tweets like this.

nate cohn

Because of tweets like this. Now I’d point out that despite all of the president’s tweets and conduct over the last two years that the president’s approval rating in Milwaukee is not that bad. It’s basically the same as his standing was in 2016. He hasn’t lost much ground there.

michael barbaro

So this is not inherently a losing approach in a key state like Wisconsin.

nate cohn

Yeah, the general strategy of trying to exploit the racial and educational divide in the country is one that tends to help his chances.

michael barbaro

So then what should the Democrats take from all this? Is it that they need to do whatever they can to win over these white voters in a place like Wisconsin, or something else?

nate cohn

If you’re just looking at where the president is positioned, the path of least resistance for Democrats is to win Wisconsin. They could try and do it another way. They could try and win through Arizona. They could try and win through Texas, but those are states where, as of today, more people like the president than Wisconsin. So if you’re a Democrat who wants to take the path that Trump has given them, it’s to figure out how to win Wisconsin.

michael barbaro

Is that another way of saying how to win white voters in Wisconsin?

nate cohn

Yes. At the moment, the opportunity that the president has given them is to secure the support of white, working-class voters in rural Wisconsin who probably voted for Obama, maybe voted for Democrats all the time over the last two decades, but voted for President Trump in 2016 and now appear to disapprove of his performance. And you could also increase black turnout. I would note, for what it’s worth, that the black share of the electorate in Wisconsin is relatively small. I think it was 4 percent of the electorate last time. Could you increase that to 5 and get a point out of it if you’re a Democrat? Yeah, you could. But in comparison to the state as a whole, it’s not the necessarily decisive factor in anything other than the closest election.

michael barbaro

Nate, I guess I’m having a little bit of a hard time understanding why there aren’t enough of the Obama voters to carry a Democrat in 2020 over the edge. What am I missing about the way voters are distributed and the Electoral College works?

nate cohn

Well, the Obama coalition depended a lot more on white, working-class voters than people give it credit for. There’s this idea that the Obama vote was a bunch of young people and a bunch of progressives and a bunch of black voters who, in some cases, had not previously been engaged in politics. That’s not what happened. In Wisconsin, Obama would have won the state without a single vote in the city of Milwaukee. You could have just severed it away and cast it into Lake Michigan and he would have won Wisconsin. You could have done the same thing in Michigan with the city of Detroit. Ohio, the whole city of Cleveland could have gone into Lake Erie.

michael barbaro

Because he won so many white voters.

nate cohn

Because he did that well among white, working-class voters. In 2016, a huge number of those voters defected. By our estimates, about 25 percent of the white, working-class voters who supported President Obama in the Midwest did not vote for Hillary Clinton. They voted for a third-party candidate or Donald Trump. And I would note that when you flip a voter, it is twice as important as when you turn a new voter out, because you take someone away from your side and add one to the other rather than just adding one to your side when you turn out someone new. So the effect of that has sort of fundamentally changed the calculation for what kinds of things you need to do as a Democrat to win in states that used to be Democratic.

michael barbaro

You have to have the right kind of Democratic nominee who can appeal to the kind of voter that you’re saying is up for grabs in Wisconsin right now and went for Obama in 2008.

nate cohn

Right.

michael barbaro

That would very much seem to support the idea of a Joe Biden candidacy or someone like a Joe Biden who’s promising to win back disaffected white voters, rather than a more progressive candidate who might alienate those voters.

nate cohn

Yeah. Leaving the specifics of Joe Biden aside, I think that if you’re looking at the approval ratings and where the clearest Democratic opportunity runs, it seems to go through white, working-class voters in the Midwest, and the president will attempt to appeal to them through immigration and cultural issues. So if you’re a Democrat, I think it would be natural to ask what kind of candidate will block the president from using immigration and cultural issues to reunite some of his support among the white, working-class voters in the Midwest.

michael barbaro

Well, given the number of strong progressive candidates in this race, is there another approach these candidates have in mind to look past the white voter in the Midwest and go after a broader, more diverse set of voters? Is there another electoral map that could be assembled here?

nate cohn

I think that that’s totally possible. I want to be clear that the president’s approval ratings are well under water nationwide, and they’re quite competitive in a number of states besides the ones we’re talking about. The president’s approval rating is around 50 percent in Florida. It’s around 50 percent in North Carolina. It’s around 50 percent in Georgia. It’s even around 50 percent in Texas. So although I’m telling you that Wisconsin is super important, I also would not rule out the possibility that the Democrats could win Texas in this election, which is really an astonishing thing to say at the same time that I’m suggesting that the Democrats have some challenges ahead of them in the Electoral College. But I think the main point that I would make on this is not so much that it’s impossible for the Democrats to win by other means but that that is sort of not the path of least resistance. It’s not taking the opportunity that the president has given them. It would be trying to force your way through a different path, and it’s also a way that would tend to exacerbate the gap between the national popular vote and the Electoral College.

michael barbaro

Increases the chance of a big gap.

nate cohn

Yeah. It increases the size of the gap. Now, the Democrats could say —

michael barbaro

Why?

nate cohn

Well, go back to something I sort of suggested earlier, which is that the Democrats are making gains in the Sun Belt and sort of losing ground over time in the Rust Belt. As that trend continues, Sun Belt states are turning blue, but they haven’t flipped blue yet. They’re just moving that way while the Democrats fall behind in the states that have traditionally been most important. This point where we are now, where the Midwest is still better than the Sun Belt, is a point where if you then choose to go for the Sun Belt in spite of that and try and move those Sun Belt states, you’ll make a lot of gains there before you’ve turned them blue, and you would be padding the Democratic margin nationwide before you’ve won electoral votes.

michael barbaro

This is what you were explaining before, Nate, how Trump could win re-election through the Electoral College even as he loses more of the popular vote. So as Democrats gain popularity in the Sun Belt, they’re gaining popular votes, individual voters. But until they have control of the Sun Belt, that doesn’t change the Electoral College math. So the much clearer path in 2020 is to go after Wisconsin, the white voters there and the Electoral College votes there.

nate cohn

Yeah. Seems like a straightforward option that requires no fundamental changes in the composition of the electorate, doesn’t require you to tap into people that —

michael barbaro

Are not registered to vote.

nate cohn

— are not registered to vote. They’re there and ready for it, and they are probably looking for a Democrat to make the pitch to them. The Democrats may not want to do that, or it may turn out that the president has the ability to rally those people back behind him with a strategy based on immigration and racial polarization. In that event, the Democrats may have to resort to plan B to go through the Sun Belt. Right now, a majority of voters in Wisconsin say they disapprove of the president. You can try and win them.

michael barbaro

What you’re saying about the choice that Democrats now face is kind of reminding me of the choice that Republicans were facing after 2012, when they commissioned this report about what had happened, and their takeaway about why Mitt Romney lost was that they need to do a much better job of appealing to people of color. But then Trump comes along, and he rejects that and says, no, let’s just go harder at the white voter. And he does that and he wins, seems to prove the autopsy report wrong. It feels like the Democrats are facing a very similar choice right now.

nate cohn

They are, in a certain sense. I mean, the president’s choice to pursue white voters works in the short term. It certainly seemed to work in 2016, because these white, working-class states in the Midwest matter so much in the Electoral College. But the president did not win the national popular vote in 2016. So if you’re the people doing the autopsy and thinking about the broad condition of the Republican Party, it is quite possible that those conclusions were borne out by the 2016 presidential election result. Certainly the diversification of Texas and Arizona and Georgia is posing a real risk to the party’s hold on those states. And over the longer term, that’s the real danger that the Republicans face by pursuing that strategy. When it comes to the short term though, the question is whether the future is here or not. And at some point the Democrats are going to have that breakthrough in the Sun Belt, I think. I don’t know what election it will be. I don’t know if it’ll be 2020, and it will be difficult to predict until it does happen, I think, or at least until the polls say that they’ve had that breakthrough. But at least for now, that breakthrough has not come.

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michael barbaro

So both parties could very well decide to focus on white voters in 2020 and put off this larger, possibly very necessary reckoning with the diversity of the American electorate because they just want to win now.

nate cohn

That’s right. There’s a growing disconnect between the growing demographics of the country and the way our electoral system represents the population. The Electoral College, more than anything else, gives weight to the close states. Historically in this country, the close states have been in the Midwest, and the Midwest remains pretty white. So if you’re a political party that strictly thinking about your chances of victory, you’ll end up focusing, on balance, more on the needs of white voters than nonwhite voters simply because of their distribution in the country and the way our electoral system is configured. As long as the Electoral College is in place, our presidential elections will come down to the most competitive states in the country, and for now, those states are relatively white and relatively working-class in the Midwest.

michael barbaro

Nate, thank you very much.

nate cohn

Thanks for having me.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today.

archived recording And the total number of votes given to each candidate was as follows. Jeremy Hunt, 46,656. Boris Johnson, 92,153. And therefore I give notice that Boris Johnson is elected as the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

michael barbaro

On Tuesday, Boris Johnson was elected as the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party and therefore the country’s next prime minister.

archived recording (boris johnson) Well, thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. Thank you.

michael barbaro

In a speech after the results were announced, Johnson confronted his immediate challenge of carrying out the cause he has long championed, Britain’s departure from the European Union.

archived recording (boris johnson) Today, at this pivotal moment in our history, we have to reconcile two sets of instincts, two noble sets of instincts, between the deep desire for friendship and free trade and mutual support and security and defense between Britain and our European partners and the simultaneous desire, equally deep and heartfelt, for democratic self-government in this country.

michael barbaro

Despite the failures of his predecessor, Theresa May, to deliver Brexit, Johnson promised to meet the October 31 deadline set by the European Union, whether he reaches a negotiated exit or not.

archived recording (boris johnson) I read in my Financial Times this morning that no incoming leader has ever faced such a daunting set of circumstances, it said. Well, I look at you this morning, and I ask myself, do you look daunted? Do you feel daunted? I don’t think you look remotely daunted to me. And I think that we know that we can do it, and that the people of this country are trusting in us to do it, and we know that we will do it.

michael barbaro