This week offered new insight from an unexpected source into his expectations as the 2020 election against Joe Biden neared.
On Nov. 1, 2020, two days before voting ended, Trump called Anthony Fauci, then the country’s top infectious-disease doctor. This was in the heart of the coronavirus pandemic, during which Fauci had become the Trump administration’s central voice on the subject. Well, second (in the estimation of Trump and his supporters) to Trump.
Fauci had given an interview to The Washington Post in which he warned that the upcoming winter would be dire, which it ended up being. Describing the call in his book “On Call,” Fauci said that Trump, flying around the country to campaign rallies even as he placed the call, was frustrated that Fauci wasn’t being more positive.
The president then offered a profanity-laced prediction of his own.
“I am going to win this f—ing election by a landslide. Just wait and see. I always did things my way. And I always win, no matter what all these other f—ing people think,” he said, according to Fauci. “And that f—er Biden. He is so f—ing stupid. I am going to kick his f—ing a– in this election.”
Trump offered putative evidence to that effect.
“The smallest crowd that I had was twenty-five thousand people,” he said. “Biden had five people blowing their f—ing horns in their cars. Tony, you have to be positive. I do not want to keep you off TV, but when you are out there, you have to be positive.”
We should remember the context for this moment. Trump had launched his campaign for president in 2015, surging quickly to lead the field for the Republican nomination. He touted poll numbers as he rose, using them to bolster a sense of inevitability. But then the general election arrived and the poll numbers turned against him. He began framing polls as unreliable or dishonest. If he truly expected to win in 2016, he was a member of a small group.
But then he did. The polls nationally were good, but they missed in a handful of states where he unexpectedly won. He became president. And, perhaps just as importantly, he was right.
So two days before the 2020 election, he was behind — but he’d been behind before. The polls suggested strongly that he’d lose, but he felt the energy of his crowds. He was batting 1.000 in presidential elections when behind in the count. Victory seemed imminent.
Or maybe this was just what he was telling Fauci. Maybe he was sending a signal to the doctor: Do what I say, because I’m not going anywhere. Follow my lead, because I’m still going to be your boss in February.
The aftermath of the election suggests that the conversation was driven by the former motivation. But it’s uncertain; staffers close to him have said that he would privately admit to having lost. What is important in this case is that the message heard by his supporters was a version of the one he offered to Fauci: They believed he was going to win — unless something happened to prevent it.
As the election neared, Trump’s supporters were extremely confident that he’d be reelected. The strongest supporters were the most confident; a Pew Research Center survey conducted that summer found that 96 percent of the most fervent backers of the incumbent president believed Biden wasn’t going to beat him. When he did, they had to choose between two options: They were wrong — or they were right. The election was stolen. Come to a rally in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021; it will be wild.
Overall, the 2020 Pew poll found Americans about split in expecting Biden and Trump to win that year’s election, even though poll respondents preferred Biden by a wide margin. In February of this year, Siena College polling, conducted for the New York Times, determined that Americans were nine points more likely to say they expected Trump to win. The same poll gave Trump a five-point lead nationally.
Notice that, in addition to the overall advantage Trump had in perceptions that he’ll win this year, Democrats were less confident that Biden will win (a 50-point advantage when comparing expectations between the two candidates) than Republicans were that Trump will (a 64-point advantage).
Eight in 10 of those who said they plan to vote for Trump believed he will win. Three-quarters of those who said they planned to vote for Biden indicated confidence that the incumbent would be reelected.
Two days before the 2020 election, an election in which his odds of victory were even lower than they had been before he narrowly prevailed in 2016, Trump was insisting to a senior government official that he would win easily. That his big rallies augured a landslide victory. Then he lost, as was expected — and he embarked on an effort to turn that loss into some sort of victory.
If he and his supporters go into the 2024 election with even more confidence about success but again fail to see it materialize, what then?
