Landslide for Trump? Local GOP Officials Feel It

The latest polls have suggested President Trump's chances of re-election are in trouble. In fact, one CNN survey was so bad that Trump even threatened to sic his lawyers on the network. But a story in Politico offers a counterpoint to all that. Interviews with more than 50 GOP party chairs at the state, district, and local levels across the US find that they're confident Trump will win—and that the polls and the media are once again getting it all wrong. "We're thinking landslide," says Phillip Stephens, GOP chair in North Carolina's Robeson County. "The more bad things happen in the country, it just solidifies support for Trump."

The gist from the interviews is that once you get outside DC, the perception that Trump is in dire straits fades quickly. "The narrative from the Beltway is not accurate," Joe Bush, chairman of the party in Michigan's Muskegon County, tells Politico. "Here in the heartland, everybody is still very confident, more than ever." The story has several quotes in that vein. The No More Mister Nice Blog assesses the story: "They might just be repeating the company line to a reporter, but it sounds to me as if they genuinely believe what they're saying." (More President Trump 2020 stories.)