How the president destroyed his own campaign.

Donald Trump can deny who won the 2020 election, but his researchers cannot. Two of them performed autopsies in their defeat, and those autopsies are now public. One of its researchers, John McLaughlin, published an analysis on Newsmax in November. Another report, written by consultant Tony Fabrizio, was posted on Monday by Politico. None of those interviewed blame the ex-president, but his numbers tell the story: Trump destroyed himself.

The autopsies identified two reasons why Trump should have won. First, based on self-identification, the 2020 electorate was significantly more republican than the 2016 electorate. Second, public satisfaction with the economy favored the incumbent. Both polls found that people who voted in 2020 thought Trump would handle the economy better than Joe Biden. McLaughlin’s analysis, based on his post-election poll of people who voted in 2020, found that 61% of those voters said they were better off than four years earlier. Despite this, Trump managed to lose a third of the 61 percent. “Totally 20% of all voters thought they were better off today than they were four years ago and were no vote for President Trump, ”wrote McLaughlin.

Fabrizio analyzed opinion polls from 10 battlefield states that Trump had won in 2016. Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas remained with Trump in 2020; Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin moved to Biden. Collectively, in the 10 states, Fabrizio computed a “massive oscillation” against Trump among the independents (17 to 19 percentage points) and a similar change among white voters with higher education (14 to 18 points). Likewise, in his national sample, McLaughlin found that Biden won moderates, 62% to 36%.

What killed Trump were the new voters. Biden won by 14 points in the five decisive States.

Trump repelled these voters, even those who were happy with the economy. In McLaughlin’s national sample, Biden was viewed more favorably than Trump. Among voters who did not like both candidates, the researcher noted, “the aversion to Trump was more dominant.” Three-quarters of Biden’s voters cited character or personality traits as reasons for their voting decisions, and the reasons they gave were “mainly anti-Trump,” wrote McLaughlin. Seven percent of respondents said they voted mostly “against Biden”, but 19 percent said they voted mostly “against Trump”.

Fabrizio found similar results. In battlefield states, voters said by a four-point margin that Biden was not “honest and trustworthy”. Trump’s deficit on the same issue was much larger: 14 to 18 points. The polls also indicated that Trump has inspired millions of new voters to appear, in person or by mail, to get rid of him. Fabrizio noted that collectively, in the five states that moved to Biden, Trump outperformed Biden among the people who voted in 2016. What killed Trump were the new voters. Biden won by 14 points in the five decisive states.

Trump also misjudged the COVID-19 policy. Throughout the campaign, he focused on quickly reopening the economy, often at the risk of reigniting the pandemic. This turned out to be disastrous for the country, but also for his candidacy. Fabrizio found that in the 10 battlefield states, “the majority of voters … prioritized to prevent the spread of [the virus] on the reopening of the economy. “The virus” was the main problem “in these states, the researcher noted,” and Biden took those voters almost 3 to 1. ” In polls and in McLaughlin’s poll, voters said by significant margins that Biden would handle the virus better than Trump.

Fabrizio signaled two particularly silly mistakes in Trump’s response to the virus. One was making fun of the masks. In the 10 battlefield states, voters who favored mask mandates (Biden’s position) outnumbered those who opposed mask mandates (Trump’s position) by a ratio of three to one. The huge pro-mask constituency went to Biden by about 30 points, on average, in the five states that turned to him. Trump’s other stupid move was his persistent defamation against Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In the five states that moved to Biden, 72% of voters approved Fauci’s job performance and 63% of those voters went to Biden.

Any incumbent would have fought a pandemic in an election year. But Trump had everything going for him. Despite the setbacks, the economy he inherited was still strong. Congress and the Federal Reserve injected trillions of dollars to support families and businesses. Republicans ended up voting for better numbers than in 2016. Still, Trump managed to lose. He lost because he ruined his work, got into stupid fights and antagonized most of the country. Their own research has confirmed this.