Donald Trump’s campaign has had a tumultuous past several months. Scandal after scandal, blunder after blunder. This may be the beginning of the end for Trump and his combative style of politics. What is interesting, however, is that Trump’s polling speaks volumes about what works and what doesn’t in the Trump strategy — particularly in regards to who is running his campaign at the time. Comparing polling data to changes in personnel and strategy can give us more insight into the seemingly imminent failure of perhaps the most storied and divisive presidential campaign of the past century.
On June 20, Trump’s loyal and highly controversial campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was fired. Lewandowski had been with Trump since the primary battle in which Trump demolished opponent after opponent. When they won, many believed that Trump and Lewandowski had redefined the ways and means of running a successful political campaign. Despite spending less than his opposition and having far less political experience than the vast majority of candidates, Trump came out on top. However, after he became the presumptive nominee, it became clear that firebrand populism wasn’t resonating well with independents.
Poll numbers were down. Way down. His offensive way of politics wasn’t endearing him to independents nearly enough for him to be successful in the long and drawn-out general election. In a shift in both strategy and personnel, Lewandowski was removed and replaced with the seemingly more professional and experienced Paul Manafort. Manafort worked to make Trump appear more presidential, keeping him on-script and introducing him to extensive use of a teleprompter. The result was immediate as Trump’s poll numbers stabilized and increased, even before the convention bump was taken into account. This, however, was not to last.
Trump ran into issues shortly after the largely successful Democratic national convention. His remarks regarding the Khan family and the utter failure of damage control following it, tanked his poll numbers. From July 30, the date of Trump’s attack on the Khans, his chances of winning the presidency, as predicted by FiveThirtyEight, hemorrhaged from roughly even with Clinton at 50.1 percent to 18.5 percent a week later. He has also damaged himself by calling for the Russians to hack Clinton’s email servers and insinuating that second amendment supporters could revolt against a Clinton administration or Supreme Court. Today, his chance of winning is at 11.6 percent.
Further confounding the efforts of the Trump campaign is the recent scandal surrounding Paul Manafort. Manafort has been tied to shady cash deals with Pro-Russian Ukrainian political parties, raising questions as to the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. On the 17th, Manafort’s leadership was weakened by the addition of Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign,effectively limiting Manafort’s influence on the campaign.
It is too soon to infer how this mix up will impact the campaign in the long run, but it is likely to revert more towards the style of Lewandowski — combative and bombastic populist politics. This could be particularly damning for Trump, as this particular style of politics seems to only be wildly popular with core Republican voters. To all appearances, independents have a rather lackluster view of it. The polling confirms this, as Clinton leads with independents 44 percent to 40 percent. His numbers are also low with African-Americans and women, polling at 1 percent and 32 percent, respectively. If the Trump campaign wants to be successful in November, polling suggests that Manafort’s strategy, when Trump actually listened to it, works. A failure to address the concerns raised by the polls will certainly result in a failure to win, or even be competitive, in the general election.