Exchange of the Day: A Winning Margin?

Ezra Klein: These are pretty small changes in Trump disapproval. If I’m reading this chart correctly, when Democrats attack Trump for cutting or wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security, his disapproval increases by 2.5 points.

David Shor: Can you imagine stopping a Trump voter on the street and you say 70 words to them and then there’s a 2.5-percent chance they changed their mind? I think that’s incredible and a big deal.

This exchange came today in NYTimes Opinion columnist Ezra Klein’s conversation with David Shor, head of data science at Blue Rose Research, a consulting firm that does political surveying, data interpretation, and message testing for the Democratic Party. The exchange highlights the gap between confidence in the Democratic Party – even among engaged activists like Klein – and the reality of Trump’s very tenuous and precarious hold on power. For context, Trump’s winning margin was only 1.5 percent. A 2.5-percent shift in disapproval rating for Trump, which Klein appears to scoff at, could make a world of difference at the polls.

Shor goes on to warn Democrats against “taking the bait” on culture war issues and some of Trump’s more outlandish proposals – think Greenland and the Gulf of America. “I think we need to make sure that we’re preserving a considerable amount of time to attack Trump on the most effective issues that voters are concerned about” – think inflation, Medicaid cuts, and repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Read, or listen, to the full conversation here.