Why is Trump obsessed with investing so much time and money in Minnesota?
Last night’s Trump rally in Duluth was old hat for us. The visits from Trump and surrogates are non-stop, and the incendiary attack ads are wall-to-wall.
Yes, I understand that in 2016 Hillary only won Minnesota by 44,593, or 1.5 percent. Yes, I realize that there are “soooo many Trump signs up in rural areas,” where “real Minnesotans” live. Yes, I realize the Iron Range is continuing to evolve into a reliably red East Dakota or North Kentucky, politically speaking.
But still, the data from 2020 just don’t look all that encouraging for Trump, or puppets such as U.S. Senate candidate Jason Lewis. Despite all of those massive Trump signs in rural areas, 55% of Minnesota’s population is in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, and Biden is doing well there. Here are the most recent polls, aggregated by fivethirtyeight.com:
(P.S. The Star Tribune/KARE-11/MPR poll published on September 26 had Biden ahead 48 percent to 42 percent, with eight percent undecided. It has Trump’s approval rating at 43 percent. Not sure why fivethirtyeight.com didn’t list that one, but that poll is consistent with the average of these other polls.)
As we all know, the 2016 polls didn’t match up with the 2016 results on Election Day, though for the most part the difference was within the polls’ statistical margins-of-error, or nearly so. It’s important to note that these most recent findings in 2020 are mostly outside the margin-of-error.
To be clear, I’m not saying Minnesota is a sure thing for Biden. The margins shown in these polls are not insurmountable, particularly if Trump continues to dump a disproportionate amount of time, money, lies, and voter suppression efforts here over the next 33 days.
But if these numbers qualify Minnesota as one of the most hopeful swing states in Trumpland, how bad must the other swing states look for Trump?
Not that I’m obsessing about this or anything…I hardly EVER look at the election models more than 10 times a day…but I agree with you that Minnesota seems the longest of Mr. Trump’s electoral long shots among the in-play states.
If you average the ratings of three election models – FiveThirtyEight, The Economist and DecisionDesk – their models give Biden an 86 percent chance of winning. That still leaves a one-in-six chance for Mr. Trump, but there appear to be better, bigger, more critical opportunities out there, He has no path to victory, for example, without Florida or Ohio and both of those are essentially toss-ups; Biden is given an average 62 percent chance of taking Florida and Trump has an average 53 percent chance of taking Ohio.
Looking at where the candidates are spending their money gives a little more texture to the analysis. A couple of weeks ago, NPR summed up campaign spending by state for each candidate and their major independent supporters (https://www.npr.org/2020/09/15/912663101/biden-is-outspending-trump-on-tv-and-just-6-states-are-the-focus-of-the-campaign) and that data suggests that Team Trump considers it a second-tier opportunity and that the Biden campaign seems to feel pretty comfortable with where things are: TrumpWorld had spent about $17 million here and BidenWorld about $9 million. Big money but nowhere near the spending in comparable states: in Arizona, it’s BidenWorld $44 million/TrumpWorld $26 million and in Wisconsin it’s Biden $44 million and Trump $32 million. In addition, some of the media buys in the Twin Cities can likely be credited to Wisconsin in an effort to reach voters in the western side of the state.
NBC just pushed an article summing up last month’s ad spending and their analysis has Biden outspending Trump three-to-one, $153 million to $57 million, since Labor Day (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/biden-outspent-trump-153-million-57-million-ads-single-month-n1241681). With outside groups figured in, the gap closes to $60 million, $189 million to $127 million. That data shows Biden spent $5.5 million in Minnesota advertising versus $2.0 million by Trump. To compare, Biden spent $12.2 million in Arizona and $9.5 million in Wisconsin and Trump spent $4.9 million and $2.3 million respectively.
Finally, looking ahead to the last month of the campaign, we have a glimpse of where the two sides see opportunity and necessity by looking at advertising reservations for the next five weeks. Biden, who raised a jaw-dropping amount of money in September and outpaced Trump by more than $120 million, has the resources to compete pretty much anywhere his team wants. Trump is more constrained because he (likely) has less cash on hand. I suspect that gap will widen when October’s numbers are published and – give the state of Mr. Trump’s finances – it seems unlikely he’ll be injecting significant amounts himself.
An article from The Hill (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/518969-biden-prepares-ad-onslaught-to-overwhelm-trump) gives us the following data:
– Overall, BidenWorld is planning to spend more than $360 million in 18 states and TrumpWorld has about $170 million on reserve (more is promised to be coming).
– Florida is getting the most love with $103 million for Biden and $62 million for Trump. Not clear if the Biden number includes Mike Bloomberg’s $100 million Florida-specific effort.
– Biden is outspending Trump by $30 million in both Michigan and Pennsylvania and by $13 million in Wisconsin.
– The Trump campaign is planning to outspend the Biden campaign, $10 million to $4 million, in Ohio; in Iowa by $4+ million and playing almost even in North Carolina, $15 million to $14 million. All three states were won pretty comfortably by Trump in 2016 so those are defensive plays as the election models rate them all as toss-ups in 2020.
There’s no mention of any spending planned by either campaign of Minnesota. Doesn’t mean there won’t be any, of course, just that the amounts reserved here didn’t seem significant to The Hill reporters.
Add it all together and my take is that neither campaign views Minnesota as a must-win state, the Trump campaign lacks the resources to make it truly competitive and thus the frequent visits to the state are 1) a reflection of Mr. Trump’s impulsiveness and lack of discipline (he’s coming here because he wants to come here); 2) hoping that personal appearances can generate free media and compensate for lack of advertising and; 3) a little bit of crossover benefit for western Wisconsin. Thus, I suspect the assessments of the election models are pretty accurate: Trump COULD win here, but only if there’s a dramatic shift in the race or if there’s a huge flaw in the models and the polling that drive them.
Those two possibilities are what are keeping me up at night.
Not that I’m obsessing on this or anything.
Exactly. It’s not that MN is impossible. Far from it. It’s just that I can’t believe it’s the best cost-benefit ratio option they’ve got. I wonder if Trump just got an extra good vibe one trip, and that’s kept him coming back seeking the rush. Or that getting so close with Hillary made this to become his Moby Dick. Speculating, of course, but that would be a very Trump, narcissistic, non-analytic way to process it.
And now we hear that they are pulling out of MN….
They’re in retreat everywhere, pulling ads from every state except their must-wins especially Florida.
While Biden is everywhere…cable, local, football games. Rumor – as reported in one article I read – is that Biden raised more in September than he did in August while it’s also been reported that many Trump donors have maxed out.
Of course, Clinton spent more than Trump so it’s not conclusive.
Being a Minnesota sports fan and Democrat in a country with a bizarre Electoral College system has led me to never feel comfortable with a lead. Nate Silver estimates Democrats chances of losing the Electoral College with a popular vote win of under 1% is only 6%! The chance of losing the EC with a popular vote win of 1-2 points is only 22%. 2-3 popular vote win = only 46% chance of EC win. We have to get up to a 3-4 point win to get the EC odds in our favor (74%). So outrageous that we have gotten conditioned to think that is normal and acceptable.And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.
If the Biden campaign and those of us who want to see him elected let up for a second, we are fools. The only thing about Donald Trump’s personality I admire is that he never, ever, ever gives up. He won’t give up before the election, on election day or any point thereafter. He will do literally anything, say anything, that he thinks gets him even an inch closer to the goal. His history is replete with examples of him “winning” by simply wearing his opponents down, being willing to do things no rational person would consider.
I will, I think, not let my guard down until I see him being flown away on Marine One on January 20th and Biden administered the oath of office.
Of course, he just as easily could be sitting in the Oval Office at that point, tweeting like mad that the inaugural is invalid and that his supporters should come to the White House to protect him.
The metrics aren’t as solid as the Great and Powerful Austin cites, but the always entertaining Rick Wilson firmly believes Trump’s campaign finances are further hobbled by what he calls “The Trump Skim”, which is to say classic Trump bookkeeping whereby you slide fat chunks of dough to “consultants” — like, you know, Ivanka T. and Eric T.
An emerging trend over the last 48 hours – too soon to say if it’s anything more than a blip or noise – is that the debate made things slightly worse for the Big Cheeto: FiveThirtyEight has moved to 80/20, a high point for the race and The Economist has moved from 85% to 88% since the debate.
But no one should take ANYTHING for granted. If you need reasons to worry, consider this:
– At this time in 2016, Hillary had a larger lead in Pennsylvania than Biden does today.
– Hillary was leading in Florida at this time in 2016; Biden and Trump are tied.
– Hillary hugely outspent Trump on television advertising.
As Obama said, if you think you’ve done enough, you haven’t.
The one other thing to consider is that the Duluth media market covers a large portion of northern Wisconsin….
Further, I have to assume that, in a form of self preservation, Trump’s campaign people need to keep him on the road and in front of adoring crowds, otherwise he might fire them all (and they probably are pretty attached to the large pay checks).
I expect there is a certain Potemkin Village thing going on there.