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Seems more like a big failure on the part of the secret service than anything else.
Political assassination attempts don’t swing votes in favor of the candidate who was almost killed. During the Brexit campaign a prominent Labour MP was assassinated, which was the first assassination of a British politician in a very long time, and I remember everyone saying that “surely” this would swing the vote to Remain, and Leave still won comfortably by the margin the more generous polls were showing, the effect was zero.
I think the imagery after the fact (ie Trump yelling wait and holding up a defiant fist) is what swings the election. Not just iconic imagery but the image of a guy demonstrating strength. Compare that to Biden…
It's pretty much the two extremes as far as the appearance of strength of the two candidates.
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It depends on how he carries himself afterwards. If he limits public appearances or speaks behind bullet proof glass it doesn't exactly demonstrate strength. If he over politicizes it and tries to blame Biden, it won't sit well with some people.
He can’t directly go after Biden. But his surrogates sure will.
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We're all probably overreacting in terms of the electoral implications.
But it's a problem that Biden can't afford right now, with everyone questioning whether he has the juice to even make it to November.
It gives Trump Pennsylvania, assuming nothing else dramatic happens between now and the election. Plenty could still happen. And honestly, when I heard about the assassination attempt I checked to see if Biden had died, but the timeline isn't quite that dank.
Why would Pennsylvania have a bigger impact than other states?
Pennsylvania is a swing state with the most delegates. If you're asking why the shooting would have a bigger impact in PA... because it happened there. Even in the internet age, proximity matters.
Butler is just so far from Philly suburbs it might as well be a different state. More Philadelphians go to NYC, DC every year than go to Pittsburgh. Northwest pa was already Trump country.
Yet votes in western PA count towards the state wide totals
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Marginal voters exist and they swing every election. Independents are a large and growing percentage of the population.
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It also changes the new cycle likely giving Biden a lifeline to stay in which is probably bad for Dems.
I'm not sure it changes things that much on that front. The GOP convention was set to begin tomorrow anyway, which would have sucked all the media coverage away from Biden.
Maybe. You could imagine court intrigue still occurring. Also killed any more stories over the last 24 hours and tomorrow.
The aspect is a replacement may be less keen to run if they believe Trump is in a better spot again killing the “replace Biden momentum” albeit for a different reason.
If anything, I think this is going to leave a lasting overshadow over a lot of Trump's court proceedings.
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Eh, Trump's VP pick was going to be the main news cycle of the week regardless.
But that assumes he’d pick the VP Monday. Again there could be a few more days.
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Agree. And whether or not is affects electoral outcomes, the conventional wisdom is that it does. That may give alternative candidates pause.
Nate Silver makes a good point that when you’re behind, you want to increase variance. Other candidates are likely to lose to trump too, but the chance of them catching fire with voters is higher than Biden.
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A better comparison would be Bolsonaro in 2018, who was IIRC behind in polls but cinched a Victory after the assassination attempt.
Hard to say in his case, it wasn’t an immediate boost (he was at around 26% before and immediately after) but he rose to the low 30s several weeks later and then won a higher percentage in the actual election. It also happened only a few days after Lula was barred, so there were a bunch of other factors in play as well that arguably explained why Bolsonaro rapidly increased in support in through late Sept and early October.
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Brazil is not really embedded in the Western media sphere/memetic pond, though. I'd be more inclined to compare with Fico, where the media barely even mustered disapproval, and instead the reaction was all "he kind of had it coming" and "what if this makes more people support his pro-Putin agenda". The subsequent EU election did not really go in his favour, either
Fico's assassination didn't happen during a national election campaign. You could argue that it happened close to European elections cycle, at least, but the European elections have their own logic due to low voting rates and aren't treated as a "real" election nearly to the same degree as national elections are.
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Jo wasn't a candidate, nor was she the candidate. she was a supporter of a larger movement. No one knew who she was when she died, she didn't have a diehard group of loyalists who believe that the state itself was trying to take down their messiah. If this doesn't move the needle then it is because the centre american politics has been long drained of undecideds.
I agree that the situations are far from identical, but I think it’s illustrative of the fact that predictions that political violence helps the injured or killed party’s team seem largely unfounded.
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The real political effect of assassinations is so subject to context and specifics that it's hard to say. Culture is also relevant - in Japan, assassination of politicians rarely results in a martyr effect - if anything, public opinion often ends up turning in favour of the cause of the assassin.
(I suspect that if anything, the supposed martyrdom effect is just a cultural strategy to discourage assassination. When politicians rally behind an assassination victim, they're contributing to a political norm that protects their own behinds.)
Agreed. It's a fairly good norm to have. Not just for the politicians avoiding the guillotine.
At some level the average American understands, or believes, that assassinations on important people threaten their comfortable way of life. In addition to that, Americans have a common association with assassinations in history. Lincoln, JFK, the average American is taught about these figures and recalls them in the context of their assassinations. On top of the taboo Americans see assassinations as Big Historical Tragedy. That elicits sympathy and dredges up deep associations found within their educational programming.
I don't think the effect is such that a bunch of D primary voters will swing to Trump. Among undecideds or swing voters, however, if this event is still at the forefront of voter consciousness come November it will have an effect. As an anecdote, a very blue couple I was with yesterday shared the news. This couple had canvassed for Biden in 2020 as I recall. They are less politically engaged this go around, but still very blue. They believed it meant the election was lost. That was one of their first reactions.
Perhaps if Biden was in a stronger position they would have reacted differently. A lot can happen, as we've seen, but this felt like a nail in the coffin to them. This is a barb in the side of avid partisans and accelerationists. Of the, actual real people, group I was with there was one "wouldn't have been so bad if he missed" flippant comment. Which Blue Couple did not appreciate and shamed him for, despite all the the vitriol Blue Wife has directed towards the former president over the years.
There are people who want Trump to win but don't want to vote for him because he's a bad person. I think it's pretty common amongst conservative blue tribers. I count myself in this group.
Watching the footage from yesterday made me like Trump a lot more. Say what you will about the guy, he showed enormous courage.
Yesterday will flip some votes at the margin which will matter in a close race.
This absolutely. Assassination attempts cut through media noise and penetrate straight to the most difficult to reach but also critical vote, the (actually real) undecided and swing voters, who often don't tune in until late and put heavy emphasis on "vibes". So this event is double critical hit, in that swing voters actually heard something so soon, and also the vibes were heavily good for Trump.
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I think at least part of that depends on the social groups you're running within. I got this (cw: ffxiv spoilers) linked in my social groups, followed by someone I gave computer build advice not twelve hours before joking about 'the hero we didn't know we needed'.
It's not universal among the left, but neither is it just the Kathy Griffins and Keith Olbermanns, either.
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A matyr needs to have his base rally in a time of disunity. The japanese provide the ur-counterexample, where Japanese Socialist Party Chairman Inejiro Asanuma was assassinated and the party lost its forward momentum, falling into infighting before disintegrating completely. Matyrs work to hyperenergize a passive but unified base, they don't work for converting or unifying.
Given that Trumps base is MAGA and anyone who thinks Dems are going too far, I see this as an energizing moment. Fun fun fun.
It also helps that Trump lived. There won’t be disunity.
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Even if it did push people towards Trump, it's too early.
It might slow all of the Project 2025/"end of democracy" talk. Which was what Biden was selling.
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