Betting on the ‘base’ — can Trump win again?

President Trump has said he intends to win the 2020 election the same way he won the 2016 election. Not with a popular vote strategy. With an electoral vote strategy. He expects his vaunted “base” — concentrated in a few crucial states — to deliver an electoral vote majority for him just as it did four years ago.

That “base” is mostly white working-class voters, or as it is measured in surveys, white voters without a college degree. They were one third of the nation’s voters in 2016, and they voted two-to-one for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton (66 to 29 percent, according to exit polls). Trump’s support was even stronger (three-to-one) among white non-college men.

Take California, a state Trump lost by more than 4 million votes. Trump didn’t even get a third of the vote in California in 2016. White non-college voters were only 19 percent of California voters.

Now look at Wisconsin, then and now a crucial state for Trump. In Wisconsin in 2016, nearly half the voters were non-college whites (47 percent, to be precise). Non-college whites voted strongly for Trump in both California and Wisconsin. There were just a lot more of them as a proportion of the electorate in Wisconsin.

Trump still has his base, even as he is losing likely voters nationwide by 16 points, according to the October CNN poll. He continues to lead among non-college whites, albeit by a smaller margin than four years ago (56, not 66, percent).

Nobody pays a lot of attention to West Virginia any more. It used to be a solidly Democratic state (coal miners). But in the 2016 election, it was Trump’s best state. He won West Virginia with 68.5 percent of the vote. The population is overwhelmingly white (93.5 percent). It has the lowest percentage of college graduates in the U.S. The state is full of what used to be called “hillbillies.” The politically correct term is “Appalachian whites.” Their patron saint is Dolly Parton. Their hero is Donald Trump.

In 2016 Trump carried seniors narrowly, 52 to 45 percent. Among seniors in the October CNN poll, Biden crushes Trump 60 to 39 percent. Seniors are the voters most vulnerable to COVID-19. About 40 percent of deaths caused by the coronavirus have been linked to nursing homes.

Women have never been enthusiastic about Trump. The joke is: “He reminds every woman of her first husband.” Women voted 54 percent for Hillary Clinton in 2016. And now? 66 percent for Joe Biden. Trump lacks the quality that was crucial for Ronald Reagan’s success, particularly with women voters: generosity of spirit. Reagan was a staunch conservative, but he never demonized people who disagreed with him. Trump bashes anyone who criticizes him, and he does it in the crudest, most insulting terms. No one has ever described Donald Trump as generous in spirit.

College graduates? They went narrowly for Trump in 2016. Now two thirds of them are voting for Biden. Why? For one thing, Trump has little respect for expertise or for science. Having survived COVID-19, Trump was asked if he now thinks he knows more about the disease than his own experts: “People are really surprised I understand this stuff. Maybe I have a natural ability,” the president responded.

Biden does not display the fatal flaw of liberals — condescension. In 2008 Barack Obama disparaged economically hard-pressed small-town voters who “cling to guns and religion.” In 2016, Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “deplorables.” Joe Biden does not have a condescending bone in his body.

Trump’s 2016 victory had a lot to do with the polls. I heard Democrats all over the country say they didn’t really like or trust Hillary Clinton but “You know what? She doesn’t need my vote.” As a result, they stayed home or voted for a third party.

It could happen again this year if Democrats who don’t like Biden (perhaps Bernie Sanders voters or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enthusiasts) believe Biden has the election in the bag. But there’s a big difference between 2016 and 2020. Donald Trump is president, and Democrats — particularly liberal Democrats — are desperate to get rid of him.

Anti-Trump voters are dominating the early absentee voting. The New York Times reports “yawning disparities in voting” across Wisconsin and other battleground states between Democratic- and Republican-leaning areas. As a Democratic consultant put it: “Democrats are highly engaged and they’re turning out. Republicans can’t say the same.”

Biden and other party leaders are encouraging Democrats to vote absentee, if only to avoid the risk of infection at crowded polling places. President Trump has denounced mail-in voting — with no evidence — as likely to invite fraud. If Republicans have a strong turnout on election day, President Trump may declare victory on election night and mount legal challenges to mail-in votes before they are counted. The result could be legal and political chaos, with the winner decided by Congress or the Supreme Court.

It looks like the only way to avoid chaos is for one of the candidates to have a landslide victory that becomes clear on election night. Right now, that kind of victory looks more likely for Biden than for Trump.

Bill Schneider is a professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of ‘Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable’ (Simon & Schuster).