US election: Can Donald Trump avoid the flames of the dumpster fire?

US President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up as he walks from Marine One after arriving on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. Picture: AFP

Last night veteran American journalist, Dan Rather tweeted that he had just checked and the dumpster fire that is American politics is still burning.

I just checked and yes more than 24 hours later the dumpster is still on fire.

— Dan Rather (@DanRather) October 1, 2020

It actually has been smouldering away for a decade or two, but this particular bin blaze shows no sign of extinguishing anytime soon.

Before the debate, I quipped a prediction that Trump would mount the stage at Case Western University Cleveland, bite the head off a kitten and go up three points in Florida.

No kittens were harmed in the debate, but Trump did not go up three points in Florida either.

There has been an exhaustive analysis of the first of three debates but for mine one moment went through to the keeper that was laugh out loud funny.

It came late in the Caterwauling in Cleveland from a Trump assertion shouted out while Biden was stumbling through an answer to a Chris Wallace question on the New Green Deal. Biden stammered that while the New Green Deal might be Democrat policy, he has his own environmental policy which on my reading is a fairly close replica.

“They want to take out the cows,” Trump yelled. Take out? A whacking? A whacking of cows? Was Biden for bovine slaughter gangland-style? Is Trump soft on cow murder?

We never got to find out. There was too much shouting. It was that kind of night.

Many commentators went for the ‘they’re both as bad as each other’ line which may be true, but the incumbent is playing catch up and a break even call on the debate doesn’t help the Trump campaign one little bit.

Early polling seems to tell the same story. The national polls show Joe Biden between seven and nine points ahead. If there has been a change, it has been a slight uptick in Biden’s favour. In key swing states, Biden’s leads remain high.

In key swing states, Biden’s leads remain high. Picture: AFP

Polling is an imperfect measure of outcome, but it is all we have. Betting markets are not necessarily predictive of anything more than gut feel, affiliation or a mirror of polling itself.

Donald Trump enjoyed a brief rise in the polls after the Republican Convention but has flatlined since.

Now, little more than a month away, we are at the point where pundits are looking at how authentic the polling is and whether, like 2016, polling errors might mask a Trump victory.

While the national vote was within polling margins of error in 2016 (1.5 per cent out), in crucial states, especially in the mid-west, the polling was out by between three and four points.

If we take a similarly sized polling error into consideration now, Biden still wins Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin fairly comfortably, and therefore, the Electoral College and the presidency.

The problem for the Trump camp is that polling errors can work either way. If the polling is selling Trump’s electoral position short by as much as five per cent, he could lose the popular vote but narrowly hang on to the electoral college. But if that same margin is added to the blue pile, Biden picks up Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Montana even Alaska and wins by a landslide.

Polling errors are reasonably common. In 2012, polling during the campaign showed Barack Obama and Mitt Romney neck and neck. Obama was re-elected with a smaller Electoral College count but still enjoyed a comfortable victory.

Five weeks from the 2008 election, the polling also showed Obama and McCain were all tied up before Obama pulled away in the last two weeks. The difference between then and now is there are fewer undecided voters.

Of course, Trump can’t be counted out. There is even polling that shows this. It is polling not of voting intention but on prediction of outcome where Americans give Trump an even money chance of being re-elected. This is understandable. Republicans for the most part, remain strident in support of Trump. When I talk to Democrats it is clear they remain deeply traumatised by the 2016 result and choose the glass half-empty approach now, terrified of another gut-wrenching against-the-odds loss.

Polling might only be indicative but what it does prove is that Pennsylvania, not Florida is the most crucial state. Biden can win Florida but still lose the college although that would be highly unlikely while Trump can hold Florida and still lose the presidency.

Biden is up anywhere between five and nine points in the Keystone State among the more reputable pollsters in the country.

It is worth remembering that Trump’s performance in the first presidential debate in 2016 was shambolic. He wasn’t across his brief and it showed. But it was his performance in the second debate that stamped him as a serious player. He was under the pump. The Access Hollywood audiotapes had been released on the weekend, revealing Trump’s boasts about the sexual assault of women.

Those tapes alone should have been a candidate killer, but Trump took to the stage, not in tired, shouty rancour but with a gleam in his eye and plenty of mischief in his words. It was a back to the wall brawling performance that saw his campaign back on track within hours.

Four years later it is different, not least of all because the maverick appeal of a Trump presidency made him a contender then while every American knows what a Trump presidency looks like now. At the time of the second debate 14 per cent of registered independent voters were undecided. It’s five per cent now.

But Trump needs to find that form and quickly before his presidency bursts into flames in the dumpster fire that is American politics.