David Wasserman illustrates the country’s culture gap through an analogy of Cracker Barrel vs Whole Foods oriented counties.

 

David Wasserman Virtually Delivers 2020 Election Year Analysis

Editor’s note: at the time of this writing, the presidential election had yet to take place.

MORE THAN 180 REALTORS® and elected officials joined NVAR for the annual Politics & Pancakes Breakfast at the 2020 NVAR Virtual Convention and Trade Show. As always, this signature event delivered entertaining and timely political analysis, but what we were missing was the networking, camaraderie, and yes – the pancakes.

David Wasserman, U.S. House editor and senior election analyst for the non- partisan Cook Political Report, discussed how the Supreme Court nomination fight will impact the election, how the President is currently polling on his handling of the pandemic, race relations and the economy, and how America is divided by a culture gap.

“Americans, more than ever before, have chosen to live in places where the vast majority of their friends and neighbors agree with their political values. This polarization has basically torn the country apart. When candidates for office these days are saying they want to bring the country together, we have a country that doesn’t really want to coexist with the other side,” said Wasserman.

Wasserman also hit on the pandemic’s implications for voting in 2020. According to Wasserman, several issues could impact the vote and lead to lengthy legal challenges: confusion on Election Day caused by closed or moved polling places and the high turnover of poll workers; potential postal delays and voter error impacting the large spike of mail-in ballots; a lack of state uniformity on mail-in ballot rules; and long counting delays resulting in fraud allegations. All of this leads to the conclusion that the winner on election night may not actually be the next President of the United States, which we may not know until weeks following the election.

Finally, Wasserman tried to predict the outcome of the election, which was still 40 days away. “There are a lot of things for Joe Biden to like in today’s polls and I have little doubt he would win if the election were held today,” said Wasserman. But Wasserman noted there were still four ways that the President could come back in the lead-up to the election. Those factors include normalizing COVID-19 life and making a breakthrough on a vaccine; hurting Joe Biden’s image and attacking him from the right and left; continuing in-person campaign efforts to combat the huge Democrat advantage in money and ads; and taking advantage of the geographic divide of support and winning the electoral college. If President Trump capitalized on a combination of these efforts, Wasserman indicated that Trump could pull out another win in the 2020 race for the Presidency.

If you missed this year’s Politics & Pancakes Breakfast, please plan to join us next year – hopefully in-person and with pancakes – for this signature annual event.



Josh Veverka is the NVAR government affairs director.