This Sunday, it’s down to the wire in a Presidential election that’s one for the record books. Americans have turned out in record numbers for early voting, while millions of Americans have opted to vote by mail in the midst of the coronavirus.
Former speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich, was one of the first to vocalize the significance of this election, and he told The Cats Roundtable this Sunday that this one would be “one of the most extraordinary elections in American history.”
Though both candidates are hitting the campaign trail hard ahead of November 3rd, making their final rounds in key swing states, Gingrich believed Trump’s determination was translating to his supporters, many of whom were new voters in 2016.
“President Trump is relying on sheer energy and dynamics,” Gingrich said, adding that Trump, as well as the Republican National Committee, were seeking to “create a whole new generation of Trump voters.”
“The polls don’t have a any method for finding those kinds of people,” the former Speaker told The Cats Roundtable. He further discredited the poll numbers that had Biden leading Trump, saying Trump’s voters “will make the polls basically invalid” just as they did in 2016.
One of the few polls Gingrich takes stock in is the Trafalgar Group, which accurately predicted Trump’s 2016 election, in part because of their ability to pick up the hidden Trump voter other polls fail to find. Trafalgar has also predicted Trump’s reelection in 2020.
“Trafalgar finds consistently that President Trump is doing five, six, seven points better than the public polls say he is,” Gingrich said.
Trump turned Democratic shoe-ins like Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2016, in part because of “out-state” voters who overwhelmingly turned out for the President. Gingrich said that if voters saw through the “hidden agendas” behind Biden’s campaign, 2020 would be no different. In places such as western Pennsylvania, Gingrich explained Biden’s criticisms of fracking, as well as his pledge to transition from fossil fuels, were heard loud and clear.
“They take it personally,” Gingrich said, predicting Biden could have lost “substantial ground” in the key swing state.
Just like Gingrich, many people believe this election has taken on more weight than just the choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. November 3rd is a choice about what it is America wants to be.
To Gingrich, this choice crystallized in light of mass lockdown orders in face of a pandemic and a summer of protest and violence that saw the fabric of America shaken to its seams.
“I think the average American knows you can’t keep a society around if you allow the thugs and the bullies and the criminals to dominate, because what’s ultimately the point of my working harder and producing something if you’re just going to steal it?” Gingrich asked.
Along with the Thursday announcement that the US economy has rebounded from the pandemic at a record-setting pace, Gingrich emphasized a vote for Trump was also a vote to keep the country open, while a vote for Biden was synonymous with voting for another shutdown.
“Trump doesn’t want to shut the economy down again,” Gingrich said. “Biden, I think having hidden in the basement for all these months, thinks it’s perfectly fine to shut things down because that’s what he’s done.”
For Gingrich, Trump’s energy and dynamism is the best reflection for how Americans want to carry themselves into the next decade.
“I just think the country, in the end, is not going to pick somebody rabbit-hiding in a basement, I think that they know the world is dangerous, they know we need somebody tough.”
Listen to the interview below
