The Department of Commerce announced on Thursday that the U.S. economy grew in the third quarter at an annualized rate of 33.1 percent, beating forecasters’ expectations.
When Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for President Trump’s reelection campaign, learned of the news, he pointed out the choice voters will be making next Tuesday. It’s a choice between “a Trump boom versus a Biden depression.”
The president echoed Murtaugh: “The really big factor in this election is the fact that Joe Biden and Kamala want to raise your taxes and raise them like nobody’s ever been raised before,” adding that the Biden-Harris proposed $4 trillion tax hike would “drive our country into depression.”
Although very important to the average voter, the health of the U.S. economy is only one of many factors in play favoring a return of the president to the White House for a second term.
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First is the “incumbent advantage,” which historians estimate will give Trump at least a two-percent advantage over Joe Biden.
Second is consumer sentiment, including both present outlook and future expectations. The University of Michigan just reported that both indices jumped in September, portending “gains in economic prospects for the year ahead.”
Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit, said earlier this week that “the U.S. economy looks to have started the fourth quarter on a strong footing” while reporting that “business optimism surged higher” last month as well.
Retail sales, both online and at stores, rose again in September for the fifth straight month. And the “Beige Book” released by the Fed last week showed “economic activity contin[uing] to increase across all [12] districts … including manufacturing … [and] housing.”
Such optimism was reflected by the Conference Board’s CEO Confidence Index as well, with “a solid 70 percent of top executives [saying that] economic conditions were better compared to six months ago … [and] 64% expect[ing] economic conditions to improve in the next six months, while only 15% see them worsening.”
Such good economic news boosts President Trump’s already-favorable momentum heading toward Election Day. Two weeks ago, Rasmussen, in its weekly White House Watch polling, had Biden ahead of Trump by 12 percentage points. Last week, Trump had closed the gap to three points. On Thursday, the race for the White House is even.
When Gallup asked likely voters whom they thought would win on Tuesday, 56 percent of them said President Trump. And when the pollster asked, “Are you better off today that you were four years ago?” the same percentage said yes: 56 percent, to just 32 percent saying no.
Pollsters not owned by or controlled by the mainstream media continue to show Trump beating Biden. Trafalgar Group estimates Trump will win at least a minimum of high 270s in Electoral College votes and “possibly going up significantly higher based on just how big this [shy or silent voter] undercurrent is.”
That “shy” or “silent” vote could be huge. Talk show host Larry O’Connor has questioned the validity of the entire “likely-voter” paradigm that drives nearly all the major pollsters. They believe they are capturing enough data from “likely voters” to make valid claims that Biden is ahead of Trump. But, says O’Connor, what about those citizens who haven’t voted in the past but are likely to next week?
Their numbers are huge. For instance, between a quarter and half of those attending Trump rallies in Des Moines, Janesville, and Muskegon did not vote in 2016. As Andrea Widburg pointed out at American Thinker: “There’s good evidence that the people who haven’t voted but are attending the [Trump] rallies are registering to vote.”
There’s the “small donor” measure of enthusiasm which is working in Trump’s favor. There’s the “swing voter” advantage that put Trump into the White House in 2016. Most of them who moved from Democrat to Republican in 2016 are sticking with Trump in 2020.
There’s the “Rainbow Coalition” of black and brown voters who are moving toward Trump. In its National Daily Black Likely Voter Job Approval for POTUS the week of October 19 through 23, Rasmussen showed a remarkable move. On Monday, 25 percent approved of the president’s job performance. By Friday, that number had nearly doubled, to 46 percent.
Other polls have showed similar, if less startling, movement toward Trump. As The New American noted, “Even winning 20 percent of [the Rainbow Coalition’s vote] would spell doom for the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.”
Matthew Tyrmand, a numbers guy who called the 2016 election for Trump, is doing so again, but by a larger Electoral College majority: between 342 and 386 votes.
In addition to the White House, Tyrmand thinks the House of Representatives will return to Republican control as well:
And we will get back the House easily (almost every seat held by a blue wave 2018 freshman Dem that voted for impeachment) and expand in the Senate by a couple of seats — picking up MI AL definitively and possibly MN while defending IA NC AZ ME easily and only likely failing to defend in CO.
The momentum shift toward Trump in so-called “battleground states” by “establishment-media” pollsters — Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona — is showing up as well. Two weeks ago, Biden held a five-percent advantage over President Trump. On Thursday, that advantage had shrunk to 3.5 percent, within the MOE (margin of error).
In politics, momentum is everything. With the economy’s third-quarter results giving the president’s campaign an additional boost, the momentum favors Trump for another four years.
Related articles:
Roaring Economic Numbers Boosting Trump’s Reelection Chances
Pollster Who Called 2016 for Trump Says He’ll Repeat in 2020
The End of Biden? Trump’s Black Approval Soars to Near 50% in Poll
