Can Trump do a 'Dewey defeats Truman'?

Washington

DURING the 1948 US presidential election, the press and media were all predicting a tight race. Incumbent Democratic president Harry Truman was not a very popular figure as he was trying to respond to a challenge from the well-regarded Republican challenger and governor of New York, Thomas E Dewey.

Moreover, the electoral base of the Democratic Party seemed to be split with many Democrats in the southern states (who at that time were leaning Democratic or "blue") toying with the idea of voting for third-party presidential candidate Strom Thurmond, who was running under the banner of the segregationist South.

In fact, pollsters speculated that if only a few thousand Democrats in states like Ohio, Illinois and California end up voting for the racist Thurmond, the election would produce a Dewey victory.

That was certainly the hope and the expectation of the leading Republican newspaper in the country, the Chicago Daily Tribune (that since then changed its name to Chicago Tribune). The conservative editors of the newspaper detested the Democrats and Truman in particular, and their correspondent in Washington kept filing reports that projected a big Republican victory.

In fact, the so-called conventional wisdom, which was backed by the results of most polls, seemed to agree: The Republican New York governor would win big and a Dewey presidency was all but inevitable.

So it wasn't surprising that with so many polls predicting a Dewey electoral victory and early results pointing to a close race, the first edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune went to press with the banner headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN".

When the final results came out, showing that Truman won the electoral vote by a large margin of 303-189 majority over Dewey (with 39 votes going to Thurmond), the Tribune changed the headline; but it had already sold around 150,000 copies with the erroneous headline.

And two days later, Truman, all too happy to humiliate the hated Tribune, was handed a copy of the newspaper's early edition with the "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN" headline, and held it up - and one of the most famous political photographs was taken.

The photograph has become a classic. A Chicagoan who had bought the first edition could finally pay the first downpayment on his house, and quite a few articles, books, films and even a few bars ended up plagiarising the famous headline.

But more significant perhaps, the headline has entered contemporary political discourse. When political candidates beat their political opponents, despite early predictions that they would lose, we say that he or she delivered a "Dewey defeats Truman".

Which is exactly the way many Trumpists are hoping that the 2016 presidential election would turn out to be. All the major Mainstream Media (MSM) are not only making it clear that they want the reviled Donald J Trump to lose, they are also predicting that the Republican presidential nominee would lose big on Nov 8. But allies of the New York real estate magnate are imagining their candidate showing up on the front of Trump Towers in New York, referring with sarcasm to the forecasts by the MSM and the conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton would be the winner.

The problem is that since the 1948 presidential election and that infamous newspaper headline, the polling industry - through the use of more sophisticated statistical models, not to mention the growing reliance on computers - has become much more advanced.

There has been no case in which the majority of pollsters have failed to forecast the outcome of a presidential race, although they had disagreed many times about the margin of the winner's electoral victory. The Democratic presidential candidate has been able to sustain a lead, which has tended to shrink and expand, over her Republican opponent since the beginning of the general election and long before the three televised presidential debates and the release of the Access Hollywood video in which Mr Trump was heard making lewd remarks about women.

That the Democratic presidential candidate was destined to win squared with the conclusions of political scientists who have been pointing out in recent years that the electoral map was becoming less favourable to the GOP. Its electoral base has been shrinking while the demographic power of electoral groups who lean Democratic - including African Americans, Latinos, single women, and young voters - has grown, not only at a national level but also in states that used to be in the Republican column, like Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada.

Which explains to a large extent why the Republicans have lost the last two presidential races and why the Democrats have a better than 50-50 chance of winning in 2016, when there were actually going to be more potential Democratic voters (like Hispanics and Millennials) available for Mrs Clinton and less prospective older white Republican voters for Mr Trump. If Hillary could only mobilise the Obama voters of 2012, the election would be hers to lose.

The Donald was hoping to change these earlier electoral calculations, by winning over those angry white blue-collar workers who could allow him not only to maintain Republican control over the "red" states of 2012. It could also ensure him victories in "purple" states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Nevada, and Maine, and perhaps even allow him to "flip" Democratic states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

While there were earlier some indications that Mr Trump was gaining slim leads in Pennsylvania, an analysis of current poll results suggests that his strategy has failed in achieving its more ambitious goals. Most polls have been indicating that Mrs Clinton is now leading Mr Trump with a margin of between five percentage points and 12 points. And they also raise the possibility of the Democratic nominee beating her Republican opponent 307 to 181 in terms of the Electoral College votes by gaining 50 toss-up electoral votes.

Some of the recent polls suggest not only that Mrs Clinton would carry toss-up states like Virginia, Colorado, and Florida, but that she has a good chance of winning a traditional Republican state, Arizona, and perhaps even a "red" state like Georgia.

But even if one assumes that the Republican nominee does carry Georgia and two other "purple" states - Ohio and Iowa that lean Republican where he is leading by a very slim margin - Mrs Clinton could still be a big winner with 307 Electoral College votes if the current trends in the polls continue and the Democrats carry Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.

But the Trumpists don't trust most of the polls, and point out to two or three outlier polls, like the Quinnipiac poll that show a tighter race with Mrs Clinton trailing Mr Trump by two to three percentage points in Pennsylvania and Florida while the two are tied in Ohio.

Trump loyalists and even the candidate himself continue to recall the results of polls that had been done on the eve of the Brexit vote in Britain that showed the "remain" camp winning the referendum on staying in the European Union.

Based on these expectations, both the Brexit vote and the 2016 presidential election would be determined by the power unleashed by populist uprising that is bringing in thousands of new voters. The pollsters are just failing to count those thousands of voters who attend Mr Trump's rallies and are overstating the electoral power of young voters, African Americans and Latinos who actually dislike Mrs Clinton and aren't going out to vote for her on Nov 8.

"Wait 'til you see the results on Nov 8. People are going to say, 'Wow! That's really surprising!' " Mr Trump said on Friday in front of thousands of people who came to hear him in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and who hope, like he does, that he would be able to pull out another "Dewey defeats Truman".