Can Trump break his 46 percent ceiling?
By Brian Arbour, opinion contributor — 06/13/20 05:00 PM EDT
Donald Trump has a ceiling, and that ceiling is below the 46 percent of the votes he won in the 2016 presidential election. Unless Trump can break through this ceiling, he is unlikely to win this November.
This is the conclusion I reached from my study of the national polls released this year. President Trump seems to be at a polling and political low point at the moment. His poll numbers have taken a downtick in recent weeks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, growing unemployment and economic difficulties, and his ham-handed and illiberal response to protests of police brutality.
But the president’s polling problems did not develop along with these crises. He has been behind the polls the entire year and was stuck in the mid-to-low 40s in head-to-head matchups in the seemingly long ago era when people could gather in indoor arenas and Black Lives Matter was a controversial, rather than consensual, political statement.
In the 2016 election, President Trump won 46 percent of the popular vote. While he trailed Hillary Clinton by over 2 percentage points, it was enough for him to win an electoral college majority. In 2020, it is an open question of whether Trump can even get to 46 percent.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/502596-can-trump-break-his-46-percent-ceiling
