Nicely stated. The Poly si major shows. I majored in Finance so my approach is different. Being a no party affiliation I have no love of the Republicans especially Mitch. Keeping in mind that Trump left the Republicans in pieces during the primary I would not count a direct relationship between other Republicans and Trump. Lots of Trump voters are and have been very unhappy with Republican. He represents something different with several "crossover" attitudes. I get the issues you touch, like I do the contrary ones of illegal voters, and various methods of defrauding the election raised by the Republicans - JFK probably did win election from the reliable "dead" vote in Chicago.
2016 was a very different election. It was about the humans not the parties. The Republican establishment hated and still hates Trump almost as much as the Dems. He won the election by almost personal will and a plane. Those votes in the blue wall states, narrow as you say, were mostly flipped Obama voters. 2008 was a "change" election but Obama had complete support of the Democratic party at all levels. He was an internal "change" candidate. Trump was more invading horde taking down both establishments in back to back games.
I suspect that party methodology efforts on both sides will not change this election's outcome, although I respect and appreciate your input on them. If voters remember pre virus economy, or do not blame him for the virus or the economic impact, he wins again. To my mind the current unrest can cut two ways. Trump was making headway with black vote, especially with black males, because of the real impact of people having jobs who had not had one. The current events and the loss of jobs could easily crush that progress. If it does, the election gets closer and possible increase turnout could make the difference. However, remember the "security" moms? The burning and destruction going on nightly could impact that suburban female Republican vote that democrats need.
Baby Bush won by a few hundred votes(I am Florida voter but hate the Bush family so I abstained that year). As your point out, Trump won by 50.000 in the three "blue wall" states. Certainly close but hardly in the class of Bush. Trump won FL by 130,000; a landslide in today's world. I am balance sheet type so while I respect the political science things, I look to the people. Trump did or tried to do everything he promise -- huge plus for anyone who has voted at least once. He had the profound impact on jobs, and it was jobs on the bottom end of scale, that he promised. Now, many might not like what he did to help make those jobs but those people would never vote for him anyway.
On the other side, almost 40 million unemployed is a horrible fact. The civil unrest is another. Those are things that can end re-election hope of any President and are my keys. I put cash down on the 2016 election. This time I am hesitate for those two reasons. In Trump favor are two things: Donald J Trump, or "Trumpzilla" and Joe Biden. That keeps my cash ready but in my hands. I am avoiding Fox news to stay out of the Republican echo chamber. I want clarity when i decide. My gut is Trump by a bigger electoral vote with another popularity vote loss. In the words of FDR: He is a ******* but he is our *******"
Hey did you have Alloway for Con Law? He was some character. Stay safe.
Appreciate the civil debate.
Ignoring the MAGA Muppets, I'll say this. Voter turnout has always been important. I worked on the Bush campaign in 1988, and they had a huge effort to assist with transportation to/from nursing homes, so that elderly Republican voters could get out to vote. It would be nice if the MAGA Muppets would stop clutching their pearls from being triggered by "vote harvesting" or whatever other conspiracy theory they envision, but both parties have made significant efforts for decades to get "their voters" to the polls, no matter what technology was used, whether it was buses or mail-in requests.
W's win (razor-thin in Florida) and Trump's win (combined vote margin in 3 key states) are different by magnitude, but they are both indicative of the way in which candidates must approach every angle of securing the Electoral College victory.
I can agree with you that the Trump win did not equate to "coattails" in either 2016 or 2018. What I find interesting right now is the swing in many Senate races, because those are the primary measures of statewide impact. If the question was just as simple as "good Republicans no longer support Trump", then you would expect a differential between polling numbers for Trump vs. polling numbers for the Senate candidate. But now there are several Republican Senators in Republican states who are now in a dead heat and/or losing, at least by poll numbers. Of course, opinion polls (I took POL 351 at UM, which was a class on political polling) and actual voting numbers can diverge, so let's see how it all plays out.
As for some of your other points, I'm not so sure that Trump was doing so much better with black voters in, say, January 2020. By "headway", I would acknowledge that he had slightly improved his poll numbers from November 2016 to January 2020, but at this point I think he's wiped out any gains and might even be running behind where he was in 2016 with black voters.
I also see your point on "security moms", but I think this is also a very complex question. While "law and order" and "economic security" are important to those voters, there is also a "social justice" and "actual programs to support me" angle as well. Many "moms" are sympathetic to the fact that some mothers are losing their children to police arrest (Minnesota) and/or vigilante justice (Georgia). Many moms have not seen any new programs or efforts to assist in either the cost or the provision of childcare and/or healthcare. And I would also submit to you that many moms have had to home-school for the past several months, and while they might enjoy some aspects of that, there is also a tremendous financial burden. I'm not coming down on one side or the other, I'm just pointing out that the calculus is very complex and may very well not follow the 2016 model.
Finally, one factor that is rarely addressed is the aging of the population. We have had 4 years of older, more "traditional" Republican voters passing away, and the replacement in the voting population by young people who have been raised in a very different world, where they tend to have more tolerance and support for "the other side" of wedge issues such as *** rights, women's issues, and immigration. Assuming a 60 year voting window (age 18 to age 78), you would get a complete replacement of the entire voting group in the span of 16 presidential elections. As you correctly pointed out, there were narrow statewide margins for Trump in 2016, particularly in Rust Belt states with aging populations. So if you replace 4 years worth of elderly Republican-skewing voters with much younger Democrat-skewing voters, that may (in and of itself) cause the state to flip.
And, to bring everything full circle, that's why turnout is so important. We all know that younger voters don't vote in as high percentages as older voters do, and that might be further complicated by the "I want convenience" youth mentality that could impact whether younger voters will wait in long lines to exercise the right to vote.
That's all. Ultimately, I don't care how anyone chooses to vote, that is everyone's right. I support actually voting, and when you see "one side" standing against any modern methods to increase voting participation (while they fail to put forth any ideas of their own), it is fairly easy to conclude that they have solid knowledge that more voters will mean "more young voters" and "more minority voters" and "more urban voters", and none of those things are really a winning formula for one particular party. If you could somehow show that there are millions of religious shut-ins who are desperate to vote, you'd see a completely different response.
Ultimately, I look at Trump's electoral chances as the following. You take his 2016 voters and ask, has he expanded this group? Are there people from 2016 who chose Hillary who are now convinced to vote for Trump? And, then, has Trump lost any voters from 2016? Plus, you have to factor in voters in the 18-22 age range who could not vote in 2016. I am no big fan of Biden (again, remember 1988), but I think he is less polarizing than Hillary was in 2016. So any of the "but her e-mails" crowd who flipped from Hillary to Trump in the last week of the 2016 campaign may certainly flip back to Biden.
As for Con Law I, I had Swan (who has since passed away). I'm not sure who Alloway is. Swan was a really good guy, he invited the whole class over to his house mid-semester, and he actually contacted me in my second year to compliment me on my exam answer on Roe v. Wade. We also had a very interesting mini-controversy late in the semester when he used the word "niggardly" in class, though I think that the discussion turned out very well in the long run.
