Trump’s shooting will transform this election – just not in the way you think
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The attempted assassination of Donald Trump is symbolic of a democracy at its breaking point.
The polling paints a pretty bleak picture: over 80 per cent believe the country is more divided now than at any time in their lifetime. A similar majority believe the US is seriously off on the wrong track. And the level of trust and confidence in the democratic institutions that govern the country, and the people who run them, are at historic lows.
As leaders from both political parties rush to condemn the other for using rhetoric specifically designed to incite and divide, the American public sinks further and further into a morass of pessimism and polarisation. I was an active part of an increasingly loud chorus warning that violence was the logical outcome of the political hate in America today.
And so it has.
Some prognosticators are predicting a Trump bump in the next few days. I’ve even heard suggestions online of a Trump landslide, carrying the Republican Party to victory by historic margins. But the assumption behind that prophecy is that there are enough voters willing to change their minds. There aren’t – even now.
As a pollster and political analyst for nearly four decades, I’ve learned to identify those who claim to be undecided but do in fact have a definite candidate preference. With Election Day now in sight, just 4 per cent of the American electorate are truly undecided – the smallest percentage in decades of presidential campaigns. Everyone has already chosen sides, and the few that haven’t are most likely to choose no one at all.
That’s why Trump’s 34 felony convictions and Biden’s horrendous debate performance barely moved the needle. There’s almost no one to move.
The shooting of the former President, as shocking and appalling as it is, is likely to have a similar impact. In the end, most voters will settle down and return to their traditional partisan allegiances. The few voters who do move towards Trump over the next few days out of sympathy will most likely drift back after the conventions.
But the shooting in Pennsylvania on Saturday will still have a huge impact on Election Day. It will guarantee that every Trump supporter now will be a Trump voter in November.
In recent months, President Trump has benefitted from more passionate and engaged followers than the Biden campaign, but the shooting will turn that intensity gap into a chasm. You could see it on display in Pennsylvania and at most Trump rallies across the country. His voters gladly cue for hours, loving the opportunity to listen to their hero for 90-minute or longer as he meanders through a litany of well-worn but crowd-favorite stories and biting rhetoric.
That participation gap is worth at least one and as much as two percent. And because the shooting happened in Pennsylvania, the impact will be most significant in Pennsylvania. This doesn’t guarantee that Trump flips Pennsylvania. But the long and winding road for Joe Biden just became even longer and even windier. Fundamentally, Trump voters are energised. Biden’s voters are demoralised.
Make no mistake: Trump’s defiant pose, fist repeatedly in the air as he was being led off the stage bleeding, will be the visual people remember at the polling booth when they think about election 2024.“Fight” was his last word before he exited the rally, and fight is exactly what his voters will do from now through Election Day. Just look at the video moments after the shooting, angry voters screaming and swearing at the media and extending their middle finger. The shooting that should bring us together may push Americans even further apart.
Conversely, Joe Biden, or whatever candidate the Democrats put up, will not have similar voter intensity or participation certainty. And it’s hard to imagine either Biden or any of the potential Democratic candidates delivering the full-throated crowd-pleasing attacks on the former President now, taking away most of their ability to play the Trump card by labeling him a threat to democracy when he just survived a real threat to democracy.
Yet while the Trump shooting will dominate political conversation and press coverage for days, it will not be the most important event of the 2024 presidential campaign, remarkably. Nor will Trump’s selection of a Vice-Presidential nominee, or either party political conventions that are starting today, or what either candidate says and does in the weeks ahead.
That distinction will be held by the first and most likely the only presidential debate of 2024, that put the former President in the electoral driver’s seat, leaving the current President reeling and struggling to remain credible and, indeed, viable.
History works in mysterious ways. Just as the killing of George Floyd had an unintended but lasting impact on the entire nation, the shooting of Donald Trump will be significantly consequential in a way the shooter never intended. American democracy is teetering on the edge, yet the 2024 presidential election is now Trump’s to lose.
Frank Luntz is an American communication analyst, pollster and academic
