How does Trump stack up 100 days out?

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On the roster: How does Trump stack up 100 days out? - Trump gets real, nixes convention rally - Senate, White House still struggling on stimulus - Senate passes defense bill despite Trump threats - Florida gymnast

HOW DOES TRUMP STACK UP 100 DAYS OUT?
Come Sunday, we will be 100 days from Election Day.

Nov. 3, 2020 may not be as climactic as some election days you remember. It will be the end of many weeks of absentee and early votes – a longstanding trend that will be massively intensified by the coronavirus. And it may be just the beginning of many more weeks of counting.

But it will still be the fulcrum point in the battle for the presidency and control of Congress that will consume billions of dollars, further disrupt the rhythms of our lives and determine which septuagenarian and his party will get the chance to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again next year as well as facing those perhaps more consequential problems and opportunities still unseen.

So how is this one going as we prepare to start counting down in double digits and how does it compare to the ones before?

This is the 18th presidential election of the post-WWII era. We could have chosen another time frame, but what we think of as the modern era in politics really doesn’t begin until 1948. The stakes were recognizable for the citizens of a superpower in a nuclear age, the means of communication and electioneering advanced into something more recognizable to us today and public opinion research came into its own.

We could have picked another number, too. But 100 is as pleasingly round as two fat little owls on a branch and that’s also how long it took Napoleon Bonaparte to get from Elba to Waterloo. Which is to say that it’s a long enough time for quite a lot to change.

First, let’s break those 17 previous elections into two broad categories: open seats and retention elections. The two are totally different animals. Though in 1960, 1968, 1988 and 2000 you did have a sitting vice president trying to keep the White House for his party, it's still not quite the same. Al Gore can certainly attest to the fact that even being the veep to a popular incumbent is no guarantee of success.

In the other 10 races, though, there was an incumbent on the ballot. In three cases – 1948, 1964 and 1976 – the incumbent hadn’t won office in his own right, but the proposition of the contests for voters was the same as in every retention election: Should we swap horses midstream or not?

As you surely know, most of the time voters prefer to keep their mount, even if they find they have more water in their boots than they would like. Incumbents won seven of the 10 retention elections (one of the three who lost succeeded the only president to have resigned).

A 70-percent retention rate may be lower than in Congress – the House cruises at levels above 90 percent in all but landslide years – but it certainly speaks to the power of incumbency. Out of 44 prior presidents, only nine incumbents ever lost an election, and give Grover Cleveland partial credit for making a comeback four years later.

Among the 10 modern-era retention elections we quickly see three broad categories: Mandates, muddles and electoral revolts. 

The biggest landslides of our era have not surprisingly been in retention elections. Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1996 led widely from pen to post and overawed their opponents on Election Day.

In two Gallup polls taken in July 1984, Reagan led by double digits and won the popular vote by 18 points, Nixon was up by about the 23-point national popular win he would enjoy and about the same went for Johnson and Ike’s wipeout wins. Clinton slightly underperformed his polls 100 days out, but still won in a walk-off.

We know that’s not what’s going to happen this year. If the incumbent wins re-election he will have to outdo his already incredible upset of 2016.

President Trump is currently getting trounced by about 11 points in an average of the five most recent useful national polls. His 41-52 deficit to Joe Biden is about double what it was with Hillary Clinton at this point four years ago. Battleground state polls across the board tell the same story: Trump is heading for a massive repudiating loss if the race does not change dramatically.

Accordingly, we can pitch out the elections of 2004 and 2012 for purposes of comparison. At this point, both George W. Bush and Barack Obama found themselves in basically steady and relatively competitive races.

Bush was essentially tied with challenger John Kerry at this point, according to late-July surveys by Gallup and WSJ/NBC News. Bush won by 2 points. In 2012, Obama had a stout 7-point advantage in the same survey and by a bigger margin in a poll taken by SSRS. Obama would go on to win by about 4 points.

Setting aside those races in which the incumbent was leading at this point, we are left with four contests: 1948, 1976, 1980 and 1992. In those cases Trump’s predecessors found themselves where he is now, unpopular, trailing and running out of time.

At this point in 1948, Harry Truman was mounting a comeback. In a late-July Gallup poll, Truman trailed challenger Thomas Dewey by 4 points, a major improvement from one taken earlier in the month. And the best news for the incumbent was that 16 percent of respondents said they were undecided.

Many of those respondents were disaffected Southerners furious at the commander-in-chief for desegregating the military that same year. That’s what led Strom Thurmond and other enthusiastic bigots to bolt the party for a Dixiecrat ticket aimed at breaking the Democrats’ back and forcing the party to embrace segregation again. While South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana voted for segregation that year, Truman kept enough white Southerners to carry the day. Truman defeated Dewey with a national popular vote of 49 percent to 45 percent.

Could Trump see a similar swing with affluent suburbanite voters who deplore his personal conduct and governing style but still would rather keep his policies overall? It’s certainly possible that those voters could be as averse to voting for a Democrat as Southerners once were to voting for a Republican.

Trump’s situation, though, seems more analogous to the contests from the most recent period of severe national turmoil and malaise, 1976 and 1980.

Like Jimmy Carter was with the energy crisis of 1979 and 1980, Trump finds himself in the thrall of external events. Both found themselves unable to address voter concerns and with messages out of touch with public sentiment – one too soft and one too harsh.

When he was 100 days from re-election, Carter trailed by a deficit of about 20 points in polls taken by both Gallup and NYT/CBS News. Carter got the race back into striking distance after Labor Day, but when Reagan exceeded the low expectations Carter and the press had set for him in the one debate of the contest, the Gipper was home free, beating Carter by 10 points.

Trump would probably prefer the story of Gerald Ford’s effort – certainly down-ballot Republicans would. A Gallup poll completed on July 19, 1976 had the incumbent trailing Carter 62 percent to 29 percent. It wasn’t much better in early August when Ford was 27 points back. Yowzer.

But Ford and his party staged an amazing comeback in the weeks that followed, thanks in large part to the shot in the arm Ford got from the enthusiastic endorsement of Reagan, who had fought him in a tough primary challenge that spring and summer.

Ford campaigned tirelessly and Carter’s folksy platitudes began to wear thin. Had Ford not stumbled so badly in his own October debate performance the race very well could have gone the other way. But the final numbers were: Carter 50 percent, Ford 48 percent.

The story Biden would probably like best is the one from 1992 when George H.W. Bush had electoral food poisoning and just couldn’t get well.  At the beginning of the race, both Bush and Clinton were getting hit about as badly by the insurgent CNN-fueled almost-candidacy of Ross Perot. But in July when Perot flaked out and quit the race he never officially entered, Clinton got his voters back, Bush never did. Surveys for Time Magazine and Princeton Survey Research Associates both showed Clinton clobbering Bush almost two to one.

When Perot got over his heebie-jeebies and parachuted back into the race just in time for the debates, he took back some of his voters from Clinton, but not enough to save Bush, who lost to Clinton 37 percent to 43 percent with 19 percent for Perot.

While the incumbent this time is certainly in some deep sauerkraut, he’s hardly the most pickled at 100 days out. He’s not facing the kinds of deficits that his fellows Bush, Carter and Ford were at this point. But that may be of little comfort to Trump since all three lost.

But as both Ford and Truman proved, even an incumbent who looks like he’s down and out can still use the power of incumbency and the elixir of party loyalty to get back in the race.

THE RULEBOOK: AND IT WON’T WORK THIS TIME EITHER
“To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.” – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 6

TIME OUT: LE DÉLICIEUX POULET
New Yorker: “It is often said that the best test of both the professional and the home cook is a roasted chicken… The difficulty, of course, is that the chicken, like many birds, consists not of one type of meat but of two—one white, the other dark. White meat (the breast) likes to cook quickly; dark meat (the legs) needs long and slow. … The simplest fix is to respect the science of the fowl’s anatomy—remove the breasts, snap off the thighs, and cook them separately. This approach is a no-brainer with other birds, especially duck… But the whole, intact chicken, especially when roasted, has properties that you don’t want to lose by breaking it into bits: for instance, the three surprisingly satisfying segments of the wing, which you can eat with your fingers (you’d never bother with, say, the delicate little flappers of a tiny quail), or the wedge of yumminess surrounding the wishbone, or, possibly best of all, the ‘oyster,’ that teaspoon of tender meat residing near each thigh. In French, it’s called ‘un sot-l’y-laisse’—i.e., only an idiot leaves it behind.”

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SCOREBOARD
NATIONAL HEAD-TO-HEAD AVERAGE
Trump: 40.6 percent
Biden: 51.8 percent
Size of lead: Biden by 11.2 points
Change from one week ago: Biden ↓ 0.4 points, Trump no change in points
[Average includes: Fox News: Trump 41% - Biden 49%; ABC/WaPo: Trump 44% - Biden 54; Quinnipiac University: Trump 37% - Biden 52%; NBC News/WSJ: Trump 40% - Biden 51%; Monmouth University: Trump 41% - Biden 53%.]

BATTLEGROUND POWER RANKINGS
(270 electoral votes needed to win)
Toss-up: (109 electoral votes): Wisconsin (10), Ohio (18), Florida (29), Arizona (11), Pennsylvania (20), North Carolina (15), Iowa (6)
Lean R/Likely R: (180 electoral votes)
Lean D/Likely D: (249 electoral votes)

TRUMP JOB PERFORMANCE
Average approval: 40.8 percent
Average disapproval: 56.4 percent
Net Score: -15.6 points
Change from one week ago: ↑ 2 points
[Average includes: Fox News: 45% approve - 54% disapprove; ABC News/WaPo: 40% approve - 58% disapprove; Quinnipiac University: 36% approve - 60% disapprove; NBC News/WSJ: 42% approve - 56% disapprove; Monmouth University: 41% approve - 54% disapprove.]

GOT A WILD PITCH? READY TO THROW A FASTBALL?
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TRUMP GETS REAL, NIXES CONVENTION RALLY
Politico: “Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he was canceling Republican National Convention keynote events set to be held in Jacksonville, Fla., next month, as the state continues to grapple with a surge in coronavirus cases. ‘I told my team it's time to cancel the Jacksonville, Fla., component of the GOP Convention,’ Trump said during a coronavirus briefing at the White House, explaining that ‘it's just not the right time’ to hold a ‘big, crowded convention.’ The convention's official business meetings were always set to remain in Charlotte, N.C., and Trump said on Thursday that those would go on as planned. But the party's big events, including Trump’s prime-time nomination speech, which the party decided to move to Jacksonville only last month, will move online, the president suggested. ‘We're going to do some other things with tele-rallies and online the week that we're discussing, which would be really good. I think we're going to do it well,’ Trump said, vowing that he would still deliver a speech ‘in a different form.’”

Charlotte will still see ‘official’ convention - Fox News: “Jacksonville’s out – but Charlotte remains. The morning after President Trump abruptly announced that he was canceling the celebratory portions of the Republican National Convention scheduled to be held in Jacksonville, Fla., the week of Aug. 24, GOP officials outlined how some of the remaining aspects of the confab will work. The Republican National Committee (RNC) now says that ‘a few hundred delegates’ will be in Charlotte, N.C., on Monday, Aug. 24 for convention business, which will include the formal nomination of the president. As Fox News reported last month, the delegates convening in Charlotte will not be voting on a 2020 party platform or even re-adopting the 2016 platform. Since there will be no convening of a platform committee, the 2016 platform will remain in effect. A Republican official tells Fox News that ‘nothing has really changed in Charlotte. The plan was to have a few hundred delegates there on Monday for convention business, including the formal nomination, and that remains the case.’”

Fox News Poll: Biden whupping Trump in Upper Midwest - Fox News: “Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump in the battleground states of Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, according to Fox News statewide registered voter surveys. Biden benefits from strong support among women, nonwhite voters, and those living in suburban areas, while Trump suffers from a lackluster performance among men and White voters. In each state’s head-to-head matchup, the president underperforms both his 2016 vote share and his current job approval rating -- and Biden’s edge is larger than the survey’s margin of sampling error. At the same time, a lot could change between now and the election, which is more than three months away, and many voters are still undecided. Notably, voters in each of these states can request and return absentee ballots starting mid-September. Here’s how the results break down state-by-state:

“Michigan: Biden maintains his lead in Michigan, topping Trump by 9 points, 49-40 percent.  In April, he was ahead by 8 points (49-41 percent). Eleven percent of voters are undecided or support a third-party candidate.

“Minnesota: Biden holds the advantage on key issues in a state targeted by Trump.  More Minnesota voters, by wide margins, trust Biden to handle race relations (by 28 points), coronavirus (+23), and China (+10).  On handling the economy, they split (Biden +1).

“Pennsylvania: Biden is ahead of Trump by 50-39 percent in the Keystone State. His advantage grows to 15 points among voters who are extremely interested in the election:  55-40 percent. Overall, 1 in 10 is undecided or backs a third-party candidate. In April, Biden was up by 50-42 percent.”

Cook slides Florida to Ds - Cook Political Report: “Given its track record in presidential campaigns over the last 20 years, it’s hard to think of Florida as anything other than a Toss Up. Since 2000, the winner of the state has never carried it by more than 5 points. In fact, in four of the last five presidential elections, the winner squeaked in by 3 points or less. But, at this point, this battleground state looks less like a 50-50 proposition and more like a state that is leaning Biden’s way. To paraphrase CNN’s crack polling analyst Harry Enten; sometimes politics is complicated, sometimes it’s not. Right now, it’s really not. When a major health crisis hits, Americans expect their leaders to handle it. If they don’t, voters will turn against them.  In Florida, as COVID-19 cases started to rise this summer, Trump has seen his vote margin and his job approval rating drop.”

How the bottom could drop out for Trump - NYT: “In the long view, the president’s losses among white voters compared with his final standing in 2016 polls are broad, spanning all major demographic categories. In more recent months, the president’s losses have been somewhat narrower and concentrated among younger voters, according to the polls. … At the same time, Mr. Biden has made few to no gains among nonwhite voters. He still has a wide lead among these voters, but his failure to improve over Hillary Clinton’s standing in the final polls of 2016 is something of a surprise… But if the president does not claw his way back into a tighter race, Mr. Trump and his party face a harsh political environment without many of the advantages that have insulated the party from public opinion in the past. Over the last two decades, Republican strength among white voters has given the party structural advantages in the House, the Senate and the Electoral College. A competitive race among white voters would deprive Republicans of those advantages, threatening carefully devised gerrymanders and raising the specter of previously unimagined losses in the Senate.”

SENATE, WHITE HOUSE STILL STRUGGLING ON STIMULUS
Politico: “Senate Republicans were forced to delay the rollout of a $1 trillion coronavirus relief package after differences between the White House and GOP leadership derailed the timing for unveiling the measure — an embarrassing setback that could have serious consequences for millions of unemployed Americans. The main area of dispute was over extension of federal unemployment assistance for workers that have lost their jobs as the United States economy shut down during in response to the coronavirus pandemic. These $600-per-week payments begin to expire this week. Just on Thursday, the federal government announced that 1.4 million new unemployment claims had been filed in the past week. With a federal eviction moratorium also ending, the economic impact could be severe for many families impacted by the crisis.”

CDC changes tune on school reopening after Trump pressure - Fox News: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday released various virtual tools and guidelines geared toward assisting schools and educational staff around the country, as in-person classes are set to resume in the fall following the coronavirus outbreak. The suggestions, which are listed on the agency's website, are also designed to help parents make certain their children are as protected as possible by taking specific precautions to limit the spread of COVID-19. ‘With states, cities, and communities around the United States experiencing different levels of coronavirus transmission, jurisdictions should ensure appropriate public health strategies are in place to slow the spread of COVID-19 as the first step in creating a safer school environment,’ the CDC said. … CDC Director Dr. Robert R. Redfield said it was vital for schools to reopen in September, but added there must be an increased sense of vigilance and practicality among students, teachers and administrators. … ‘The CDC resources released today will help parents, teachers and administrators make practical, safety-focused decisions as this school year begins.’”

Tracking the contagion of corona conspiracies - Pew Research Center: “Most Americans (71%) have heard of a conspiracy theory circulating widely online that alleges that powerful people intentionally planned the coronavirus outbreak. And a quarter of U.S. adults see at least some truth in it – including 5% who say it is definitely true and 20% who say it is probably true, according to a June Pew Research Center survey. The share of Americans who see at least some truth to the theory differs by demographics and partisanship. Educational attainment is an especially important factor when it comes to perceptions of the conspiracy theory. Around half of Americans with a high school diploma or less education (48%) say the theory is probably or definitely true, according to the survey, which was conducted as part of the Center’s American News Pathways project. That compares with 38% of those who have completed some college but have no degree, 24% of those with a bachelor’s degree and 15% of those with a postgraduate degree.”

SENATE PASSES DEFENSE BILL DESPITE TRUMP THREATS
Reuters: “The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, a $740 billion bill setting policy for the Pentagon that President Donald Trump has threatened to veto over a provision removing Confederate names from military bases. The vote was 86-14, one of the few times the Republican-led Senate has broken from the president, and could pave the way for a fight later this year with the White House. The Democratic-led House of Representatives also passed its version of the NDAA earlier this week with far more than the two-thirds supermajority needed to override a veto. Like the Senate NDAA, the House bill also included a provision to change the names of military facilities named after generals who fought on the pro-slavery side during the Civil War 155 years ago. … Now that the House and Senate have both passed versions of the bill, congressional negotiators will meet behind closed doors to negotiate a final, compromise NDAA, reconciling differences between the two. The process will likely take months. That compromise must pass both chambers before it can be sent for Trump’s signature or veto.”

PLAY-BY-PLAY
Trump awards Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jim Ryun, ‘master of the mile’ and former Kansas congressman - Fox News

AUDIBLE: FLATTENING THE CURVE, INDEED
“It went in the wrong direction. I joked around after and said I used to be a shortstop when I played ball as a young boy and I thought I was supposed to throw to first base.” – Dr. Anthony Fauci joking about his lackluster first pitch at the MLB season opener in Washington.

ANY GIVEN SUNDAY
Tune in this weekend as Mr. Sunday sits down with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas. Watch “Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.” Check local listings for broadcast times in your area.

#mediabuzz - Host Howard Kurtz has the latest take on the week’s media coverage. Watch #mediabuzz Sundays at 11 a.m. ET.

Share your color commentary: Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM and please make sure to include your name and hometown.

FLORIDA GYMNAST
NY Post: “He flipped out. A Florida man was caught on camera trying to evade arrest — by cartwheeling away from the police. The now-viral footage shows the gymnastics enthusiast blocking the path of a truck at a Wawa in Orlando, by doing a flip in the middle of the roadway. Officers took him down for apparently blocking traffic, but the man was able to wiggle out of their grasp. He then launched into a cartwheel — but didn’t get very far. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department identified the spry 40-year-old as Gianfranco Fernandez, according to Orlando outlet WOFL-TV. He was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest.”

AND NOW, A WORD FROM CHARLES…
“The arguments for and against the filibuster are so well-known to both parties as to be practically memorized. Both nonetheless argue their case with great shows of passion and conviction. Then shamelessly switch sides — and scripts — depending on the ideology of the nominee.” – Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018) writing in the Washington Post on April 6, 2017.

Chris Stirewalt is the politics editor for Fox News. Brianna McClelland contributed to this report. Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here.