It's pretty typical for them to take a day or two off before debates to prepare.

I don't remember enough of them to know if 4 days are typical or not, but then again we're also in a pandemic.

cool. any source would be nice, again bad at google

https://www.npr.org/2016/09/22/494901644/how-clinton-and-trump-are-preparing-for-the-first-presidential-debate

I just googled "clinton days off debate" and got this

Published September 22nd, debate was September 26th according to wiki, so 4 days.

Seems 4 days is typical since this was the first thing I found.


https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-preparing-final-debate/story?id=42864168
"Final debate" prep Clinton took 5 days off?

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Oct 19 2020 07:31pm

A very interesting article on the voter shift from 2016 to 2020:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-losing-ground-with-white-voters-but-gaining-among-black-and-hispanic-americans/

Tldr: Biden has improved the Demoratic margins with white voters compared to Hillary four years ago, particularly women and the elderly, while Trump has indeed improved his standing with younger blacks and with non-mexican latinos.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 19 2020 08:03pm

Twilight zone

It makes perfect sense though. Trump is talking less about immigration than in 2016, and has taken strong stands against Cuba and Venezuela. And there is a lot of talk about socialism within the Democratic party, which doesnt fly at all with Cubans/Venezuelans/Brazilians and potentially other types of latinos. Taken together, all these factors mean that Trump improves his margins with latinos somewhat.

Similarly, younger black males tend to be receptive to his machismo and his superficial, empty projections of power and virility, and they are less devoted to the Democratic party than their parents. Likewise, a non-negligible share of black Americans is probably turned off by the rioting, looting and arson which have mostly taken place in their neighborhoods.

When it comes to white voters, it seems logical that the trend of college-educated voters and suburbanites toward the Democratic party has accelerated in a time where Democrats are increasingly aligned with pro-establishment and pro-status quo policies while the GOP under Trump stands for disruptive change or disruptive chaos. These groups are also those who tend to value institutions the most. The shift of older whites away from Trump is of course due to his handling of coronavirus.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 19 2020 09:57pm

Trump barely squeezed out a victory in an election cycle where people were really wanting an outside candidate. Things were pretty good, we had 8 straight years of economic growth, unemployment was way down, etc. etc. When times are good you can afford to shake things up. Now that times aren't good people want stability. If Trump had seen Covid coming and pivoted to being a "real president" he could have easily kept this election by using the "disaster mode" boost that strong leaders get.

Rally around the flat effects fade away very quickly. Pretty much all European governments which had a huge surge in popularity in the beginning have seen their polls come back down to earth, with only a small-ish effect remaining if they did a good job, and zero effect or even slipping poll numbers if they did a bad job.

Trump didnt need to do a great job on the pandemic though, he didnt need a rally around the flag effect to win reelection. All he needed to do was an okay-ish job that is good enough to not erode his support among seniors.

I only heard about his senior votes being eroded a few weeks ago. Did it happen recently, or have his senior numbers been bad for a long time?