Elections: AffTrump Wins: 2AC

Trump will win – secret Trump supporters

Stephens, Sept. 29 (Bret, writer for New York Times, https://www.startribune.com/anatomy-of-a-secret-trump-voter/572580192/)

Anatomy of a secret Trump voter

These voters aren't donning MAGA hats, but there are more of them than you think.

Not all Trump voters advertise their support, but their presence will be felt on election day.

Chris is a registered Democrat in her 50s who lives in Manhattan. She's well-educated, well-traveled and well-informed. She has voted for candidates of both parties over the years and was enthusiastic for Bernie Sanders in 2016.

She's asked me not to publish her last name. It would not go down well for her at the store where she works as a manager if her colleagues knew that she plans to vote for Donald Trump.

Chris is also gay. "Being a lesbian who's voting for Trump is like coming out of the closet again," she tells me.

Liberal readers who conjure an image of a Trump voter probably think of people like Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who pointed guns at protesters outside their St. Louis home in late June. But if Trump defies current polling and wins again, it will be thanks to a discreet base of support from voters like Chris, who fit into none of the cultural or demographic stereotypes of the Trump base.

It's worth understanding where she's coming from.

Start with the economy. "I haven't seen double digit [gains] in my 401(k) since the internet boom of the late '90s," she says. "It went up 19.6%" in the year before the pandemic. "Look at the stock market," she says. (Up about 35% from four years ago.)

"Look at gas prices." (About the same as what they were when Trump took office, but well below the $3.31 per gallon at the midpoint of the Obama administration.)

"This is everyday stuff that affects me," she says. "I don't care about Afghanistan and the Middle East. I care about having a job. I care about having health care through my company. I was out of a job a few years ago. Obamacare priced me out [of private insurance]. It was like, $560 a month. Then Obama's website blew up. He can't get the website right?"

Then there's the pandemic. "Is Trump trying to play it down?" she asks. "Yeah. But when this first started, the news media was saying that millions of people were going to die. And look at it: 200,000, compared to the population."

What worries her more are the effects of the response to the pandemic in a liberal city like New York.

"Crime is in my neighborhood now. There's a homeless encampment near me that's growing and growing. They have a living room and a shower curtain and that's where they go to the bathroom. I have a guy who walks in front of the store every day. In a diaper! And there's lawlessness coming into the store every day, with an attitude of 'Who's gonna stop me?' "

Regarding Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, she adds, "I can't put into words how inept this guy is."

I ask Chris whether Trump's behavior has ever come close to being a deal breaker for her. She asks me to name some of the lowlights.

"Grab 'em by the. …"

"Didn't bother me at all. For every cad out there, there's equally a gold digger who will let you do it."

The media as the enemy of the American people:

"These days, yeah. Whenever I read a front-page story and I get to a disparaging adjective, I stop reading."

The Brett Kavanaugh nomination:

"I didn't believe Christine Blasey Ford for one second. Her lack of recollection; the fact that nobody could [contemporaneously] corroborate her account."

Trump-Russia:

"The Clintons' fingerprints are all over this. I'm really glad we have Bill Barr as AG to look into it."

Trump's truculence on the world stage:

"Everyone kowtows to Iran because they're crazy. Now we have our own bit of crazy."

"Very fine people on both sides":

This one stops her. "That was really bad. He didn't think it through but I think he believes himself."

So how does Chris feel about the Biden-Harris ticket? "Fifteen years ago, maybe I would

have voted for Joe Biden. But he's weak. And what did he do with his 40-odd years in Washington?"

As for Kamala Harris, Chris dismisses her outright. "She doesn't know what she believes. She won't be the adult in the room."

You don't have to agree with Chris on any of these points. You can note some of the inconsistencies in her views, most of all between her support for Sanders, who as president would have waged war on Wall Street, and her support for Trump, whose pro-Wall Street policies are a big reason that she supports him. And you can easily dismiss Chris as an outlier, an anecdote, a red voter in a blue state.

That would be a mistake. If good political analysis were merely a matter of looking at big data, Hillary Clinton would be president today. Analysis also requires us to listen attentively to individual voters. If the Democratic Party and its allies can't hold on to a voter like Chris, who else might they be losing?

Trump Wins: Ext

Trump will win – Enthusiasm determines Voting Patterns over Polls

Politico, Sept. 13 (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/13/trump-adviser-election-win-413283)

A senior Trump campaign adviser said Sunday he believes it's likely the president will trail in the polls and mail-in voting requests going into Election Day but come from behind to win, similar to his victory in 2016.

“I would concede that it's probably going to be a similar scenario where, when we look back retrospectively we will probably see that the president was down into Election Day, and then won Election Day itself by an incredibly wide margin,” senior Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Cortes’ remarks come as Democrats outpace Republicans in mail-in ballot requests, especially in key battleground states. A new Fox News national pollshows Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden winning 71 percent of likely voters who said they planned to vote by mail.

Cortes suggested more Democrats requesting ballots didn't necessarily indicate they would vote for Biden, but said that, regardless, Donald Trump would likely close the gap on Nov. 3.

The president has repeatedly attacked mail-in voting, claiming without evidence that it could lead to more instances of ballot fraud. 

Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel also predicted Trump would prevail, despite Democrats' lead in fundraising.

"I feel very good about the investment that the RNC's put in place, and I feel very confident in the plan that the campaign has," she said. "The plan, the campaign will have the money and it has the strategy to win."

On Fox, Cortes explained his belief in an Election Day win for Trump stemmed in large part from the gap in enthusiasm between Biden and Trump supporters. 

Trump has continued to lead Biden in enthusiasm, though the new Fox poll indicated Biden may be bridging that divide: 43 percent of likely Biden voters said they were enthusiastic about voting for Biden, up 12 points from Fox’s June poll. 

The Fox News poll of 1,191 likely voters was conducted Sept. 7-10 with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Trump wins—five reasons

-Incumbency bias

-Strength

-Economic rebound

-Anti-elitism

-Outsider bias

Feehery 9—8 [John Feehery, partner, EFB Advocacy, “Feehery: How Trump Wins,” THE HILL, 9—8—20, https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/515404-feehery-how-trump-wins, accessed 9-16-20] **NCC Packet 2020**

Most political analysts believe that Joe Biden will beat Donald Trump in the coming election. They are wrong. Here are five reasons why Trump wins reelection:

1) Beating an incumbent is hard: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won their reelections not because they were great presidents but because they were incumbents. Reagan lost the Senate in 1982 and endured a crippling recession but still was able to bounce back to win a landslide in 1984. Clinton’s first two years were so bad that Democrats lost the House for the first time in 40 years. Bush blundered America into a very unpopular war in Iraq after the devastating attacks on 9/11, and yet was able to beat a hapless John Kerry in 2004. Obama’s response to the fiscal crisis of 2008 was to pass an unpopular health care law while presiding over the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression and yet he was able to beat Trump’s biggest critic, Mitt Romney. The power of incumbency is a huge advantage, which the current occupant of the White House is using very effectively, from handing out aid personally in places like Kenosha, to pardoning convicted prisoners who had turned their lives around, to using the bully pulpit to set the media narrative day after day.

2) Strength vs. Weakness: The American people typically like their presidents to exhibit strength. Neither Jimmy Carter nor George H.W. Bush, despite his victory in Iraq in 1991, were seen as exceptionally strong leaders. Carter’s American “malaise” speech backfired on his spectacularly. When Bush looked at his watch during the first town-hall debate with Bill Clinton, he seemed largely uninterested in running for reelection. Reagan showed strength by standing up to the Soviet Union, Clinton showed strength by besting Newt Gingrich, W. showed strength by using his megaphone standing on the debris on 9/11, and Obama showed strength by confronting the Tea Party movement. Trump’s is showing his strength by standing up to the radicals who are destroying many of America’s finest cities. They are the perfect opponent.

3) The Economy Stupid: It’s not about the unemployment rate. It’s not about GDP. It’s about where the bulk of the American people perceive things are going for them personally. Under Jimmy Carter and H.W., most Americans felt things were going down the tubes. Under Reagan, Clinton, W. and Obama, there was a general sense that the economy was moving in the right direction. No rational American blames Trump for what COVID-19 did to the economy and indeed, they give the president high marks for how he handled it before the crash. Now, all indications are that unemployment is dropping and people are getting back to work. That usually means good things for the incumbent president.

4) The Elites Don’t Have it: Reagan, Clinton, W. and Obama were all perceived to be more in touch with the desires of middle America than their opponents. Reagan, of course, torched Walter Mondale on his desire raise taxes on the working class. Clinton spent his whole presidency cultivating the Bubba vote. W’s campaign mocked John Kerry as an effete flip-flopping windsurfer. And Romney’s career as a vulture capitalist proved easy pickings for the Obama campaign. Donald Trump is most anti-elite president since Andrew Jackson and it will serve him well as a contrast to career politician Joe Biden.

5) Insiders lose, Outsiders Win: The last true insider to win a presidential election was George H.W. Bush, and he lost reelection. There is a long litany of political insiders who have lost in their efforts to gain the White House. Mondale, Bob Dole, Al Gore, Kerry, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton were all perceived by the media establishment to have superior resumes and the experience necessary to be successful presidents. None of them won, with Gore coming closest because he was running against another political insider, W. Bush. Joe Biden is actually campaigning on his 50 years of political experience as the man who can make America calm again. But the American people haven’t suddenly fallen in love with the Washington establishment and his efforts will likely meet a similar fate to all the other insiders who have come before.

Trump Wins: Norpoth Model—2AC

Trump wins—Norpoth model

KLTV 8—21 [KLTV, staff, “Prolific Predicor of Elections Says rump Wins 2020 in Landslide,” 8—21—20, https://www.kltv.com/2020/08/21/prolific-predictor-elections-says-trump-wins-landslide/, accessed 9-12-20] **NCC Packet 2020**

The chances that President Donald Trump wins re-election in 2020 is near certain, according to a political science professor whose election model has a history of correctly predicting election results.

Stony Brook University professor Helmut Norpoth’s Primary Model shows President Trump has a 91-percent chance of winning re-election, according to his interview with Stony Brook News.

Norpoth’s model relies on the results of presidential primaries, not polls that are often used as indicators of popularity. According to Norpoth, Biden is in a much weaker position than Trump because of his poor showing in the first two primary races.

Norpoth was one of a handful of pollsters who correctly predicted Trump’s victory in 2016, and his Primary Model has predicted five of the six presidential elections since 1996. When applied to previous elections, the model correctly predicted 25 of the last 27 elections, missing only the 2000 election in which George W. Bush defeated Al Gore and the 1960 election in which John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon.

“The key to the November election is the primaries,” Norpoth told Fox News in July. “The early primaries are giving us a lot of information. Based on that, Donald Trump won them very easily in his party. Joe Biden, the likely nominee for the Democrats, had a great deal of trouble, pulled it together, but on balance is that stronger performance of primaries that gives Donald Trump the edge in November.

“People have forgotten how Joe Biden did in New Hampshire,” Norpoth added during his interview with Stony Brook News. “He was terrible. He got 8.4 percent of the vote, which is unbelievable for a candidate with any aspirations of being president.”

As of early August, CNN polled Joe Biden at 51 percent and President Trump at 42 percent. Reuters, ABC/Washington Post, CBS/YouGov, and Fox News polls showed similar results, forecasting Biden between 49 percent and 53 percent of the popular vote. It is important to note that in the U.S., the president is elected by the electoral college, not by the popular vote, and national polls only approximate the popular vote.

U Overwhelms: Woodward—2AC

Uniqueness overwhelms – Woodward’s book dooms Trump

Elkind 9/10 – Digital Coordinating Producer for CBS (Elizabeth, “How Woodward's book could put Trump in a "place of vulnerability" ahead of November”, CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-bob-woodward-book-vulnerable-november-presidential-election/, September 10, 2020) **NCC Packet 2020**

Newly-released excerpts and audio recordings from journalist Bob Woodward's new book, "Rage," could undo the Trump campaign's efforts to paint a "law and order" portrait of the United States under Donald Trump by returning to a conversation the president had been trying to steer away from — the coronavirus pandemic. "It resurrects the pandemic as an issue," CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett told "CBS This Morning" Thursday. "These revelations bring the pandemic and all of its complications, all of its disruptions right back front and center. And that is a place of vulnerability for this president." Mr. Trump took part in 18 interviews with Woodward over the course of seven months. In a February audio recording obtained by the Washington Post, the president admitted the severity of the coronavirus even as he held indoor campaign rallies and repeatedly compared the virus to the flu. In the recorded interview, Mr. Trump acknowledged that COVID-19 "goes through air" despite continuing to speak at packed events. "It's also more deadly than your, you know, even your strenuous flus," the president can be heard saying. "This is 5% versus 1% and less than 1%, you know, so this is deadly stuff." In contrast, the Trump campaign has spent months bolstering the White House's response to the pandemic — but according to Garrett, the revelations puncture the president's "confidence and optimism" about the coronavirus in the U.S. He referenced Mr. Trump's March 7 trip to the CDC in Atlanta, where he spoke to doctors and was "essentially projecting to the country, a month after he'd already disclosed to Bob Woodward how serious he knew the virus was, that he knew everything that needed to be known, and it wasn't a big deal." "What did that cost the country? It cost the country the ability to mobilize," Garrett said. By publicly downplaying the virus, Mr. Trump had delayed "a serious national conversation" about containment measures such as masks, social distancing and prioritizing which places should open and what should stay closed, Garrett said. "We did not have that conversation," Garrett said. "It was lost in the president's perpetual optimism about where the virus was and where it was going — that he misread that is an absolute fact and will be on the ballot in November." The pandemic has hit the U.S. harder than any other nation in the world, leading in both number of cases and deaths. With the national death toll climbing past 190,000, Garrett said the president's reelection numbers could slide, even in Mr. Trump's politically safest areas. "Lots of his supporters know that he's optimistic and strong, true. But if that optimism and that strength cost the country things that it wishes it hadn't been cost and imposed difficulties people are so tired of, there's only one person to blame for that — the president of the United States," he said. That uncertainty could prove useful to Mr. Trump's rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, Garrett said. Throughout the pandemic, the Democratic nominee has emphasized the importance of social distancing and mask wearing, as well as listening to scientists whose views often clashes with the president's. "That gives the Biden campaign something it hasn't had in two and a half weeks — a clear shot to reengage the conversation about what this president did, what he knew, and most importantly what he didn't say about the pandemic," Garrett said.

Thumper: Hacking—2AC

Hacking thumps

THE WEEK ’20 [THE WEEK, staff, “Russia’s 2020 Plan,” 6—8—20, https://theweek.com/articles/918145/russias-2020-plan, accessed 9-6-20] **NCC Packet 2020**

Will Russia interfere again?

It never stopped. The Russian trolls and military hackers who undermined U.S. democracy in 2016 have continued their efforts to confuse and divide Americans, all U.S. intelligence agencies agree. As November approaches, the Kremlin is engaged in a multi-front cyberattack. Russia deployed social media bots to boost Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) presidential campaign, U.S. officials said, and last week, the National Security Agency announced that a hacking group called Sandworm — part of the Russian military unit that stole 50,000 Democratic National Committee emails in 2016 — has launched a campaign to penetrate email servers in the U.S. Security experts were puzzled why Russia didn't wreak more havoc in 2016 after targeting election systems in all 50 states and penetrating Illinois' registration database. It was probably "reconnaissance," Michael Daniel, a cybersecurity expert, told Congress — preparation for an even more ambitious future strike. What's their objective? To sow chaos, inflame existing political divisions, and destroy public faith in elections and democracy. Dezinformatsiya, the tactic of pumping propaganda into rival nations, flourishes on social media, where Russians can easily pose as Americans. Russian deceit, however, is not limited to online activities: Russia infiltrated the National Rifle Association and evangelical groups in 2016 and organized at least 22 political rallies on U.S. soil. Russians tamper with election infrastructure and then exaggerate the success of their efforts, seeking to make Americans believe that election outcomes could be illegitimate. If Hillary Clinton won in 2016, Russia planned to spread the hashtag #DemocracyRIP. What did Russia do in 2016? Four U.S. spy agencies, a GOP-controlled Senate committee, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller all concluded that Moscow ordered the attack in 2016 to spread disinformation and help elect Donald Trump. Russia's cyber operation, directly approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin, employed more than 800 people who created memes, fake accounts, and bogus news articles to stoke Republican fear and anger and to convince Sanders supporters and African Americans that Clinton was corrupt and a racist. The DNC emails Russia stole and selectively published via WikiLeaks showed that party officials wanted Clinton to win the primaries — angering Sanders' supporters. In his 22-month investigation, Mueller did not find proof of an explicit criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign, but he did conclude that Russia had interfered "in a sweeping and systematic fashion" and that the Trump campaign had been "receptive" to Russia's help. Some 272 contacts between Trump's campaign and Russia-linked operatives were documented, with 38 in-person meetings. Trump aides overheard Roger Stone — later convicted of obstructing the Mueller probe — discussing coming WikiLeaks dumps with Trump. Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gave detailed state polling data to a Russian oligarch and later lied about it. Standing beside Putin at a summit meeting in Helsinki in 2018, Trump said, "I don't see any reason" why Russia would have interfered. What's Russia's strategy this year? Disinformation campaigns will be more sophisticated. Russians often did a sloppy job imitating Americans in 2016, posting in broken English from accounts traceable to St. Petersburg. Now Russians are thought to be working from U.S. servers. An analysis of Russia-linked Facebook posts last fall found a focus on stirring up racial resentments, spreading fear of immigrants and Muslims, and inciting gun owners. The accounts targeted battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Arizona, and Florida. Are election systems vulnerable? The nation's nearly 8,000 local voting jurisdictions use a complex patchwork of websites, databases, and hardware, giving hackers countless potential targets. In the 2018 midterm elections, an estimated one-third of jurisdictions used voting machines that were at least 10 years old. Russia is clearly keen to exploit American weaknesses, and in February, an aide to Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire told Congress that Moscow will try to ensure Trump's re-election. Trump berated Maguire for the briefing and fired him days later. The new DNI, former Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), is a fierce Trump defender who has questioned whether Russia really favored Trump in 2016.

Thumper: Voter Suppression—2AC

Vote suppression alone thumps

Woodbury & Reddy ’20 [Terrance Woodbury, partner, HIT Strategies and Tanvi Reddy, Research Fellow, HIT Strategies, “Voter Suppression Could Cost Democrats the Election—Here’s What They Should Do,” THE HILL, 5—8—20, https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/496864-covid-19-voter-suppression-could-cost-democrats-the-election-heres-what, accessed 9-1-20] **NCC Packet 2020**

The coronavirus pandemic has upended every facet of American society and left many of us scrambling to adjust to “new normals” in the ways that we interact, work and live. Unfortunately, not enough attention has been given to how the pandemic changes the way we vote. While the foreseeable future remains largely uncertain, there is one certainty that remains — Nov. 3, 2020 will be election day for all 50 states in America. Although it is imperative to alleviate the medical and economic pressures caused by this pandemic, equal attention must be paid to safely and securely administer what is arguably one of the most consequential elections of our lifetimes. Especially, we must center the underserved communities that have been impacted by COVID-19 the hardest and face the most structural barriers to voting. Current attempts to flatten the COVID-19 infection curve are starting to slow the rate of new cases and deaths per day, but the threat of a second wave of infections in the fall has many Americans worried about the safety of voting in the general election. In fact, the majority of Americans believe the pandemic will disrupt voting in November and want safer alternatives to cast their vote. Also, just as the economic and medical impacts of COVID-19 have disproportionately affected young, urban and diverse communities — the base of the Democratic coalition — disruption to voting in November threatens to disenfranchise the exact same communities. With millions of college students displaced from their primary residence, the coronavirus is making many young people unsure of how they will vote in November. Additionally, over half of black voters have never voted by mail. Confusion and misunderstanding around the voting process during this pandemic threaten to suppress turnout among these critical voting blocs. These voters are already cynical towards voting by mail, as younger, minority voters face twice the absentee ballot rejection rate as older, white voters and are more likely to vote on Election Day. The 2020 primary election has already revealed just how disproportionately COVID-19 voting would impact the electorate. In Wisconsin, the Republican legislature blocked an order from Gov. Tony Evers (D) that would have delayed the election to pursue safer alternatives for voting. The result: thousands of poll workers refuse to participate, 6+ hour lines to vote and hundreds of ballots not delivered on time. In Milwaukee County, home to 600,000 people including 70 percent of the state’s African American population, polling locations were reduced from 180 in 2016 to only 5 in 2020 with a 41 percent drop in turnout. Imagine scaling this scenario nationally with over 100 million Americans attempting to cast a vote on the same day — mass disenfranchisement the likes of which we have not seen since the Civil Rights Movement. Republicans around the nation have already begun pursuing more ways to limit access to voting during this pandemic to improve their political odds. Kentucky just passed a new photo-ID law requiring voters to show a valid photo-ID to vote despite the state offices that issue such IDs being indefinitely closed. Trump recently selected a high-ranking RNC fundraiser with no relevant experience to be the Postmaster general for USPS at a time when vote by mail is expected to rise. Moreover, the Republican National Committee has been suing across the country in key swing states including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to oppose expanding vote access.

Elections: NegBiden Wins: 1NC

Biden is ahead – Debates and Polls

NASDAQ.com, Sept. 30 (https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-1st-presidential-debate-the-market-reaction-and-the-road-ahead-2020-09-30)

The Market Reaction

With Trump trailing Biden in the polls, the 1st debate would have been an opportunity for Trump to close the gap.

As Biden went for the President’s obvious failings, however, there was little in response other than the interruptions.

If the market reaction was anything to go by, then the 1st live televised debate would have to go to Biden.

In response, the U.S and European futures fell into negative territory after kicking off the day in the green.

The market movements also cleared up any uncertainty over which side of the fence the markets are sitting.

A 2nd Term for the U.S incumbent is considered to be market positive. While spending would likely be drastically reduced, there would be no tax hikes. This would support the U.S equity markets should the economic recovery continue.

All in all, there was nothing dramatic from the debate that could swing the polls in either direction.

At the time of writing, the Dow mini was down by 308 points, with DAX futures down by 68 points. While the risk-off sentiment drove demand for the U.S Dollar, the Japanese Yen also found support. At the time of writing, the Japanese Yen was up by 0.16% to ¥105.49. The rest of the major currencies were in the red this morning.

The Road Ahead

While the polls put Biden ahead, the current fear is that he may not reach the magic number of 270 college votes. This would bring a period of uncertainty for the U.S. When considering the fact that Trump has vocally stated that he may not concede is another issue.

Postal voting has been a hot topic and this may well become a major issue in the event that Biden winsâ¦

The markets will now look ahead to the next debate on 7th October. The vice-president debate may have more to offer the markets. How Kamala Harris performs will be of great importance to the Democrats and Bidenâ¦

Then the markets can look forward to the 2nd live presidential candidate debate on 15th October.

Biden Wins: 2NC

Biden’s ahead, but small changes swing it

Brownstein 9—15 [Ronald Brownstein, “Why the Stability of the 2020 Race Promises More Volatility Ahead,” CNN, 9—15—20, https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/15/politics/2020-election-american-voter-worldviews/index.html, accessed 9-16-20] **NCC Packet 2020**

Biden by any measure retains the upper hand in the presidential race. He holds a consistent lead in national polls and usually leads in five of the swing states both sides consider the most competitive (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Florida), with the two men usually running about even in the sixth (North Carolina).

All of those were states Trump won in 2016; by contrast, the President does not lead in any state that Hillary Clinton carried last time. And polls put Biden within range, to varying degrees, in four other states Trump carried: Iowa and Georgia, especially, but also Ohio and even Texas.

But even Democrats acknowledge that Biden's advantage isn't large enough to guarantee him victory in the Electoral College. Because all of the key swing states lean slightly more Republican than the nation overall, even a slight improvement for Trump might put him in position to win 270 Electoral College votes.

What's more, Biden's national advantage over Trump isn't meaningfully different than it was a year ago, despite the searing intervening event of a pandemic that soon will have claimed 200,000 American lives. To take one measure, the Real Clear Politics average of national polls last October showed Biden at 50.1% and Trump at 43.4%; the result last weekend was 50.5% to 43% -- virtually unchanged.

Biden is ahead narrowly – best studies prove

The Hill, Sept. 28 (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/518600-biden-holds-narrow-lead-over-trump-ahead-of-first-debate-poll)

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds a narrow lead over President Trump, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, released exclusively to The Hill one day before the first presidential debate. 

Forty-seven percent of likely voters said they would vote for Biden if the election were held today, while 45 percent said they would back Trump. The survey marks a 3-point improvement for Trump and a 2-point decline for Biden from the last poll that was conducted in August. 

Biden also led with likely voters who said they were unsure of who they were going to vote for, with 52 percent saying they were leaning toward supporting the former vice president at the ballot box and 48 percent leaning toward voting for Trump. 

"The poll shows the race closing to 2 points with likely voters and 4 points with leaners as the president showed improvement in the economy that dipped below double-digit unemployment and hit the theme of curbing unrest on which he gained," said Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll director Mark Penn.

The same survey showed Biden with an advantage on likeability, with 44 percent of respondents saying they like the former vice president personally and 38 percent saying they disliked him. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they disliked Trump personally, while 33 percent said they liked him personally. 

The findings come as Biden and Trump prepare to meet face-to-face for Tuesday's presidential debate. The forum is expected to cover a number of topics including the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, Trump's Supreme Court nominee, and the fallout over a New York Times investigation that found the president paid just $750 in federal income tax in both 2016 and 2017. 

Biden wins now, but Trump can still rally his base and win

Schoen 9—13 [Douglas Schoen, political analyst, “Presidential Race Is Much Closer than Many Now Think,” THE HILL, 9—13—20, https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/516172-presidential-race-is-much-closer-than-many-think, accessed 9-16-20] **NCC Packet 2020**

With just over 50 days until the election, most objective observers will tell you that Joe Biden is favored to win. Indeed, Biden leads Donald Trump by more than 7 points nationally, according to Real Clear Politics.

However, there is still a clear path to victory for Trump, and this race is actually much closer than many now believe it to be. While Biden leads nationally and in several battleground states, many of his leads in swing states are even tighter than they were for Hillary Clinton in 2016, notably in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida, all states that she lost.

Some of his leads in battleground states are within margins of error, as in Nevada, where Biden leads by 4 points, and in New Hampshire, where he leads by 3 points, according to polling by the New York Times and Siena College. His lead in Arizona has dropped to 2 points, according to polling from Gravis. Indeed, this past week, the Cook Political Report changed its election forecast, moving Florida from “lean Democrat” to “toss up,” and moving Nevada from “likely Democrat” to “lean Democrat.”

The tightening race could be attributed to the fact that margins for Biden are shrinking with the critical constituencies of Hispanic voters and white working class voters. Hispanic voters comprise a significant portion of the eligible population for swing states like Florida and Arizona. As a bloc that votes reliably blue when they do turn out, notably Hispanics not of Cuban descent, Democrats have to turn them out in large numbers in order to be successful. This would take a robust targeted advertising campaign and a significant investment in a major voter outreach operation.

While Biden has employed neither strategy to the extent he should, Trump is making inroads with Hispanic voters through targeted advertising along with media, notably within Miami Dade County. Trump has outspent Biden by around $4 million on television commercials in this media market, most of which are Spanish language ads. In addition, the conservative allies are heavily engaged in voter outreach. Such investment is helping Trump gain ground among Cuban American voters, who are receptive about his tough stance toward Havana, cultural conservatism, and likely also his attacks on Democrats for backing policies that lean toward socialism.

This clear Hispanic engagement is raising the chances of Trump winning this swing state rich in delegates. Biden still has a lead in Florida, but that has shrunk since last month, and is now at less than 3 points, according to Five Thirty Eight. The challenges for surveying Hispanics include sampling issues and language barriers, Their overall support for Trump in states like Florida and Arizona could even be understated, given that the president is making gains with this core group that is difficult to survey.

While Hispanics not of Cuban descent swung for Clinton, turnout among these voters was lower than her campaign anticipated, as it assumed that scathing remarks from Trump about Hispanics would drive these voters to show up for Clinton in 2016. Regrettably, Biden and his campaign seem to run with this same miscalculation. While he leads Trump among Hispanics overall by 16 points in Florida, according to polling by Equis Research, he is trailing those numbers that Clinton had by 11 points. Clinton won these voters by 27 points, even as she still lost the state to Trump.

Likewise, Biden is losing ground for Midwestern and Rust Belt states with high populations of white working class voters, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, which swung for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but then for Trump in 2016. Indeed, the failure of Biden to convey a narrative focused on jobs has likely contributed to his polling lead diminishing in states like Pennsylvania. His polling lead over the president there has fallen by more than 1 point since last month, according to Five Thirty Eight.

Further, over the last four years, there has been a critical swing with voter registration toward Republicans in key states such as Pennsylvania, which signals the potential for another victory by Trump in that state. As recent analysis from Politico detailed, Republicans have netted several times as many registered voters for Pennsylvania than Democrats have since 2016. Republicans added nearly 198,000 registered voters in the last four years, while Democrats have gained only 29,000 registered voters.

Further, as the New York Times argued, anecdotally and using statistical evidence from past elections, this race could truly be about rural voters across the country, who turned out for Trump in 2016, though Biden has overall ignored them, and it could be part of the undoing of Democrats once more, as it was in 2016. So while Biden is ahead at the moment, a second term for Trump is well within the realm of possibility.

Biden is ahead, but the race is tight enough to swing

Kilgore 9—17 [Ed Kilgore, journalist, “Biden Maintains Electoral College Lead, But Its Fragile,” NEW YORK MAGAZINE, 9—17—20, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/polls-biden-keeps-electoral-college-lead-but-its-fragile.html, accessed 9-18-20] **NCC Packet 2020**

Now that we are in the stretch drive of the 2020 presidential election, polls are coming in hot almost every day, and on any given day there’s some good news for both Biden and Trump. The big picture is a bit ambivalent: Biden continues to enjoy a broad advantage in the battleground states that will determine the Electoral College winner, but his margin for error remains small.

Biden’s lead in national popular-vote polling is slowly eroding but remains formidable compared to past Democratic candidates, particularly given the fact that most pollsters have already begun applying likely voter screens that usually benefit Republicans. In the FiveThirtyEight polling averages, Biden leads Trump 50.3 to 43.5, or by 6.7 percent (down from a peak of 9.1 percent on August 29). At RealClearPolitics (which averages raw polling data without the weighting and adjustments FiveThirtyEight deploys), Biden’s lead is down to 5.8 percent (likely because a new Rasmussen poll shows Trump actually leading, the first in RCP’s database to show that since February). One national survey that’s been getting a lot of attention is the USC-Dornsife tracking poll, the only major national pollster that consistently showed Trump ahead just prior to Election Day in 2016 (though that meant it was even more inaccurate than some others, since HRC did win the popular vote by 2.1 percent even as the final USC survey showed Trump up by three points). As recently as last week, USC-Dornsife showed Biden with a double-digit lead, but its latest numbers have cut that to under seven points. It does seem to have a pattern of regularly oscillating pro-Biden and pro-Trump trends.

But it’s state polls that have drawn the most attention this week, and they provide relatively good news for Biden, as Nate Silver explains in a handy graph showing recent polling trends in all the competitive states:

As Geoffrey Skelley explains, the Arizona and Minnesota numbers are particularly significant if they hold:

Biden’s improvement in Arizona is particularly noteworthy as Arizona is a cornerstone of most Electoral College maps in which Trump wins. That is, if Trump carries the state, he wins the election 59 percent of time, according to our forecast; but if Biden wins Arizona, Trump has less than a 7 percent chance of winning overall …

Meanwhile, Biden’s improvement in Minnesota is also bad news for Trump, as the campaign has long viewed Minnesota as a potential target to expand the map — the president only lost the state by about 2 points in 2016. However, Minnesota seems to be steadily moving away from Trump.

Arizona remains close, though: A new Monmouth survey released after Skelley wrote about the state showed Biden up by just two points (48-46) among likely voters if turnout is higher than in 2016 (more likely than not), and tied with Trump at 47 percent if turnout drops (e.g., because of fresh COVID-19 concerns or voter-suppression efforts).

Florida’s the most important state providing relatively good news to Team Trump in the last few days, with Biden’s lead in the RCP polling averages declining to 1.4 percent (it’s at 2.1 percent at FiveThirtyEight) and two recent polls (from Florida Atlantic University and NBC News–Marist) showing the race tied. The megatrend in Florida is that Biden is overperforming with the senior voters who went heavily for Trump in 2016, while Trump is posting big margins among South Florida’s intensely anti-communist Latino communities. Florida Democrats took a big hit late last week, however, when a federal appeals court upheld the state GOP’s efforts to halt implementation of a voter initiative reenfranchising ex-felons.

The big picture remains: Trump’s Electoral College advantage (as illustrated by his relative standing in battleground state as opposed to national polls) means Biden starts losing a lot of states if his national lead drops to below, say, 3 percent. Above that level, he has a lot of ripe targets in states Trump really must carry.

Biden Wins: A2 “U Overwhelms”

Trump loses now, but it is close enough he could swing it

ECONOMIST 9—12 [THE ECONOMIST, staff, “Donald Trump Could Still Stage a Comeback (Again),” 9—12—20, https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/09/12/donald-trump-could-still-stage-a-comeback-again, 9-16-20] **NCC Packet 2020**

The newest polls and economic data have shored up the president’s odds, though they remain worse than in 2016

Every four years, political journalists and prognosticators deem America’s presidential contest the “election of the century”. By definition, each cannot be. But at the risk of causing readers’ eyes to roll backwards, the stakes really do appear higher than usual this time round. In early June The Economist published its own statistical forecasting model for this November’s presidential contest to guide such handicapping. Back then, it gave Donald Trump at best a one-in-five chance of winning a second term. But by July, as unrest and the coronavirus ravaged the nation, his odds had slumped to as low as one-in-ten. There they stayed until the middle of August. Now, our model shows Mr Trump has clawed back a sizeable chunk of support.

His nationwide deficit in vote-intentions versus Joe Biden has shrunk from ten points at its peak to just eight on September 9th. And in the key states of Florida and Pennsylvania—the two most likely to provide Mr Trump or Mr Biden with their 270th electoral vote—the president’s deficit has narrowed even more. Sunshine-state voters favoured Mr Biden by eight points at his peak in July. Now, they prefer him by just four. One high-quality pollster, Marist, has the candidates level in Florida (though more polls are surely needed to determine whether this is an outlier). In Pennsylvania, Mr Trump has risen from a nine-point deficit to a six-point one.

Other election indicators have also been good for the president of late. Our index of economic growth—which combines annual change in eight different indicators, from the unemployment rate to real personal income and manufacturing output—has been improving steadily since July. The August jobs report, which recorded a nearly two percentage-point drop in unemployment, contributed to a positive trend.

Mr Trump’s job-approval ratings have also gone up. In early August we calculated that 15 percentage points more Americans disapproved of the job he was doing as president than approved of it. By September his popularity had improved a bit, to just an 11-point deficit. Taken together, these economic and political variables alone suggest the president will lose the popular vote by five points; up from a negative-six-point projection two months ago.

Right now the most likely outcome of the election is still that Mr Trump loses. Our election-forecasting model projects that he will fall about 70 electoral votes shy of winning, though there is enough uncertainty in the election to suggest he could still prevail. We predict a relatively low (but by no means impossible) one-in-seven (14%) chance of a Trump victory. For context, our model would have given him more than twice the chance (37%) at this point in 2016. Because of Mr Trump’s deficit in swing-state polls and the virus-stricken economy, he will have a tough slog to get a second term—despite voters’ marginally improving evaluations of his candidacy.

Thumper Ans: Hacking

No hacking problem—tech and process reforms, Russia’s not trying

Marks ’20 [Joseph Marks, journalist, “The Cybersecurity 202: Election Security Officials Sound Confident About November,” WASHINGTON POST, PowerPost, 8—6—20, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/06/cybersecurity-202-election-security-officials-sound-confident-about-november/, accessed 9-12-20] **NCC Packet 2020**

Election security officials are confident they made key changes to make in-person voting safer in November. But lawmakers are farther apart than ever on how best to protect the election that’s just three months away.

The Department of Homeland Security’s top election security official, Chris Krebs, ticked off a slew of accomplishments during an address at an online version of the annual Black Hat cybersecurity conference. They include an extensive cybersecurity testing program for state and local election offices and digital sensors that can alert DHS about hacking attempts at thousands of county election offices.

“It’s night and day compared to what existed in 2016,” Krebs said. He said he’s confident that “2020 will be the most protected and most secure election in modern history.”

Lawmakers, meanwhile, have fallen into partisan bickering with Republicans and Democrats accusing each other of aiding U.S. enemies rather than combating them.

That split screen has been a relative constant during the past four years.

And it comes as officials are facing a new kind of insecurity – a potentially massive wave of mail-in ballots as fewer people go to physical polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.

With some notable exceptions, federal, state and local officials have made steady progress with changes to transition to more secure paper ballots and implement cybersecurity protections and post-election audits.

Congress, meanwhile, has failed to pass any significant campaign or election security legislation. It has delivered about $1.2 billion to states to improve cybersecurity and make voting safer during the pandemic, but that’s far less than Democrats have requested and many experts say is necessary.

Recently, the congressional wrangling has focused on a Republican investigation into work in Ukraine by Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

For the past several weeks, Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) have warned about a foreign disinformation campaign trying to get Congress to undermine the election — a likely reference to the investigation led by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates has accused Johnson of “facilitating a foreign influence operation to undermine our democracy” in part to distract from the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Paul Sonne, Karoun Demirjian and David L. Stern report.

Johnson and Grassley punched back yesterday, arguing it was Pelosi and Schumer who were undermining election security by questioning their investigation.

“It is certainly our goal to eradicate foreign influence from our elections. But your use of this issue to knowingly and recklessly promote false narratives for political purposes is completely contrary to that goal,” the lawmakers wrote.

Then they got harsher: “Although it is undisputed that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, as they have done in the past and will continue to do in the future, you have twisted this fact beyond recognition to forge a weapon for the purpose of attacking your political opponents no matter its tenuous relationship with facts or the truth.”

So far, Russia doesn't appear to be trying for a repeat of 2016.

That year, Russian hackers compromised voter databases in at least two states, though there’s no evidence they changed any information or compromised actual voting infrastructure. They also scanned but did not hack into election systems in dozens of other states in addition to hacking and leaking embarrassing information from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

Krebs warned of “a whole lot of scanning” of election-related computer networks by U.S. adversaries this year, a list that might include China and Iran as well as Russia.

But there has been “nothing at the directed, focused level of 2016,” he said.

That’s good news for election officials who are trying to remain secure against Russian hacking even as they tackle a slew of challenges related to running an election during the pandemic.

Hacking’s not a problem --- major upgrades since 2016

Brumfield 20 – veteran communications and technology analyst who is currently focused on cybersecurity. She runs a cybersecurity news destination site, Metacurity.com, Cynthia, 1/21. “US elections remain vulnerable to attacks, despite security improvements.” https://www.csoonline.com/article/3514950/us-elections-remain-vulnerable-to-attacks-despite-security-improvements.html**NCC Packet 2020**

Certainly, voting security has made great strides since 2016. State and local governments took advantage of a funding boost under the Help America Vote Act to improve their infrastructure and better coordinate among themselves to harden election systems. Congress allocated an additional $425 million as part of a spending compromise that was passed and enacted in late-December, giving election officials even more latitude to make improvements.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) tells CSO that the agency has seen marked improvements in security over the past few years. “In our work with all 50 states and more than 2,400 local jurisdictions, we’ve seen a maturation in the risk management practices across the sector,” the spokesperson says. “Whether implementing controls like multifactor authentication and intrusion detection systems or exercising incident identification, communications, and response, the progress for election security is real.”

Even more improvements to how the country responds to election threats could flow from a decision announced last week by the FBI to alter its policy regarding how it informs state officials about local election security breaches. In the past, the FBI informed state officials of cybersecurity attacks on local election infrastructure after informing local officials, allowing state officials to proceed with vote tallies and other efforts without full information. Now the bureau plans to keep state officials informed in a timelier manner, hoping to improve federal and state cooperation on election security matters.

Thumper Ans: Voter Suppression

Democrats control the voting process in most swing states

Ford 20 --- Matt Ford is a staff writer at The New Republic, “The Blue Wave That Saved the Vote”, Soapbox, May 22nd 2020, https://newrepublic.com/article/157777/2018-election-democrats-voting-rights**NCC Packet 2020**

When most people think about the significance of the 2018 midterms, they think about the House of Representatives. Democrats, propelled by voter antipathy toward President Donald Trump, retook the chamber for the first time in eight years. The breakthrough ended two years of complete Republican control of the federal government. It also paved the way for Trump’s eventual impeachment in the Ukraine scandal last fall. As the 2020 election nears, however, it seems like the most decisive result of the last cycle may not have been at the federal level. Voters also went to the polls in 2018 to elect a variety of state and local officials. In certain key states that Trump had won in 2016, they opted to elect Democrats to critical positions—posts crucial to the preservation of voting rights. Democrats ultimately flipped governorships in seven states, as well as the secretary of state’s office in Arizona, Colorado, and Michigan. Those relatively unheralded results will have a profound effect on voting rights ahead of the 2020 election. In some states, the Democratic gains will provide a bulwark against potential degradations of the electoral system in the months leading up to the November vote. In others, they will provide an opportunity for Democrats to push back on restrictive measures and ensure that more Americans might have a voice in choosing their next president. Either way, it could be a grim sign for Trump’s already flagging reelection chances. Trump is increasingly showing signs of fear about greater voter participation in November. In a series of Twitter posts this week, he railed against officials in Nevada and Michigan for their plans to send vote-by-mail applications to every registered voter in their states. “Michigan sends absentee ballot applications to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election,” he wrote on Wednesday. “This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!”

Doesn’t impact results

Hoekstra & Koppa 20 --- Mark Hoekstra Texas A&M University, and Vijetha Koppa, Institute of Management Technology, Dubai International Academic City, “Strict Voter Identification Laws, Turnout, and Election Outcomes”, CATO, Feb 19th 2020, https://www.cato.org/publications/research-briefs-economic-policy/strict-voter-identification-laws-turnout-election**NCC Packet 2020**

Results indicate that there is little scope for strict voter identification laws to affect voter turnout. This finding stems directly from the extremely small number of votes cast by individuals without IDs, even in settings where such votes are explicitly allowed and counted. Specifically, we show that a voter identification law would reduce turnout by no more than 0.06 percent in Florida and 0.2 percent in Michigan. This suggests that at least in these two states, very few voters without IDs choose to vote even when they can. Unsurprisingly, the small effects on turnout imply that there are very few elections in our sample that could have been affected by a strict voter ID law. Even under the most extreme assumption — that all votes for the winner (and none for the runner‐up) cast without an ID would be excluded under strict law — we estimate that a strict law could have changed the outcome in fewer than 0.35 percent of local elections and 0.09 percent of state and national elections in Florida. Similarly, we show that fewer than 0.55 percent of state and national elections in Michigan could have been affected. Estimates under more reasonable assumptions result in even smaller (and likely more accurate) potential electoral impacts. In short, the evidence presented here indicates that even if the worst fears of critics or proponents were true — that all those who would have voted without IDs are fraudulent or that all would be disenfranchised — it would have at most a tiny effect on election turnout and outcomes.

Warming: Biden Solves—Paris

Biden will rejoin Paris Commitment

Harvey ’17 – (Chelsea Harvey, freelance journalist covering science. She specializes in environmental health and policy June 5, 2017 “Withdrawing from the Paris deal takes four years. Our next president could join again in 30 days.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/05/withdrawing-from-the-paris-deal-takes-four-years-our-next-president-could-join-again-in-30-days/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e5a5ef726744)

While President Trump has vowed to formally withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, sparking international outrage, it doesn’t necessarily mean the end of U.S. involvement forever. A future president could have us back in the agreement in as little as 30 days, legal experts say. Under the rules of the Paris agreement, parties are allowed to exit and reenter as they choose, although withdrawing is a much lengthier legal process than returning. And there are no provisions stipulating how much time has passed after withdrawal before a nation can begin the process of rejoining the agreement. “A subsequent president would thus be able to submit a document stating the United States’ intention to become a party to the Agreement as soon as she or he wanted to,” Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, said in an email to The Washington Post — although he added that such an action is certainly outside the norm. “Countries don’t typically withdraw from complex international agreements that they led the way in negotiating,” he said. The rules of withdrawal As it is, Trump’s verbal pledge to withdraw, which he revealed in an internationally resounding announcement last week, is not final — yet, anyway. Withdrawal requires a formal process, which will take nearly four years to complete. The earliest a U.S. withdrawal could be finalized is Nov. 4, 2020. According to the rules of the Paris agreement, nations wishing to exit must first submit a document to the United Nations specifying their intent to withdraw. However, this is permitted only after three years have passed since the agreement entered into force — and that date was Nov. 4, 2016. This means that the U.S. can submit its written notice Nov. 4, 2019, at the earliest. After that, the rules specify that the official withdrawal will take effect exactly one year later at the earliest, or potentially on a later date of the party’s choosing. In that intervening year, a nation may decide to cancel its withdrawal at any point, said Maria Manguiat, a climate expert with the United Nations Environment Program’s Law Division. “It doesn’t make the country look very good, but legally it’s entitled to do that,” she told The Washington Post. Altogether, if Trump acted as quickly as possible to withdraw from the agreement, the process could be completed Nov. 4, 2020, at the earliest. That’s the day after the next presidential election. Rejoining the agreement And as Burger pointed out, there’s nothing stopping a future president from adding us right back in. According to the agreement’s rules, parties may officially join in one of two ways. First, they can join by signature and ratification — that is, by participating in the agreement’s original negotiations and then signing on board. This is how the United States originally became a part of the agreement. After the deadline for signature has passed, which occurred April 21 of this year, parties may join through a process called accession, which is essentially the legal term for joining an agreement at a later date, after it has already been negotiated and signed by other nations. Parties that join by accession are subject to all the same conditions as parties that joined by signature, and nothing in the rules prevents a nation from joining by signature, withdrawing and then rejoining by accession. According to Manguiat, the United States could do just that by simply submitting another document to the United Nations, which it may do at any time after withdrawal takes effect — even immediately, if the president so chose. Its reentry would take legal effect just 30 days later. In theory, our next president could start this process immediately upon taking office — potentially right after the Jan. 20, 2021, inauguration, if a transition occurs at that time. And in the meantime, it’s likely that rejoining Paris will feature as a key campaign promise for any liberal candidates running against Trump in 2020. International outrage aside, polls suggested that most Americans wanted the U.S. to remain in the Paris agreement, and it’s likely that many would support an immediate reentry under a new leader.

Warming: A2 “Too Late”

We are near but not at key tipping points – Paris accord key to solve

Michael Marshall 9/19/20, The Guardian, “The tipping points at the heart of the climate crisis”, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/19/the-tipping-points-at-the-heart-of-the-climate-crisis accessed 9/28/20 tog

These developments show that the harmful impacts of global heating are mounting, and should be a prompt to urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But the case for emissions cuts is actually even stronger. That is because scientists are increasingly concerned that the global climate might lurch from its current state into something wholly new – which humans have no experience dealing with. Many parts of the Earth system are unstable. Once one falls, it could trigger a cascade like falling dominoes.

Tipping points

We have known for years that many parts of the climate have so-called tipping points. That means a gentle push, like a slow and steady warming, can cause them to change in a big way that is wholly disproportionate to the trigger. If we hit one of these tipping points, we may not have any practical way to stop the unfolding consequences.

The Greenland ice sheet is one example of a tipping point. It contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by seven metres, if it were all to melt. And it is prone to runaway melting.

This is because the top surface of the ice sheet is gradually getting lower as more of the ice melts, says Ricarda Winkelmann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. The result is familiar to anyone who has walked in mountains. “If we climb down the mountain, the temperature around us warms up,” she says. As the ice sheet gets lower, the temperatures at the surface get higher, leading to even more melting. “That’s one of these self-reinforcing or accelerating feedbacks.”

We don’t know exactly how much warming would cause Greenland to pass its tipping point and begin melting unstoppably. One study estimated that it would take just 1.6C of warming – and we have already warmed the planet 1.1C since the late 19th century.

The collapse would take centuries, which is some comfort, but such collapses are difficult to turn off. Perhaps we could swiftly cool the planet to below the 1.6C threshold, but that would not suffice, as Greenland would be melting uncontrollably. Instead, says Winkelmann, we would have to cool things down much more – it’s not clear by how much. Tipping points that behave like this are sometimes described as “irreversible”, which is confusing; in reality they can be reversed, but it takes a much bigger push than the one that set them off in the first place.

In 2008, researchers led by Timothy Lenton, now at the University of Exeter, catalogued the climate’s main “tipping elements”. As well as the Greenland ice sheet, the Antarctic ice sheet is also prone to unstoppable collapse – as is the Amazon rainforest, which could die back and be replaced with grasslands.

A particularly important tipping element is the vast ocean current known as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which carries warm equatorial water north to the Arctic, and cool Arctic water south to the equator. The AMOC has collapsed in the past and many scientists fear it is close to collapsing again – an event that was depicted (in ridiculously exaggerated and accelerated form) in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow. If the AMOC collapses, it will transform weather patterns around the globe – leading to cooler climates in Europe, or at least less warming, and changing where and when monsoon rains fall in the tropics. For the UK, this could mean the end of most arable farming, according to a paper Lenton and others published in January.

Tumbling dominoes

In 2009, a second study took the idea further. What if the tipping elements are interconnected? That would mean that setting off one might set off another – or even unleash a cascade of dramatic changes, spreading around the globe and reshaping the world we live in.

For instance, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is releasing huge volumes of cold, fresh water into the north Atlantic. This weakens the AMOC – so it is distinctly possible that if Greenland passes its tipping point, the resulting melt will push the AMOC past its own threshold.

“It’s the same exact principles that we know happen at smaller scales,” says Katharine Suding of the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has studied similar shifts in ecosystems. The key point is that processes exist that can amplify a small initial change. This can be true on the scale of a single meadow or the whole planet.

However, the tipping point cascade is very difficult to simulate. In many cases the feedbacks go both ways – and sometimes one tipping point can make it less likely that another will be triggered, not more. For example, the AMOC brings warm water from equator up into the north Atlantic, contributing to the melting of Greenland. So if the AMOC were to collapse, that northward flow of warm water would cease – and Greenland’s ice would be less likely to start collapsing. Depending whether Greenland or the AMOC hit its tipping point first, the resulting cascade would be very different.

What’s more, dozens of such linkages are now known, and some of them span huge distances. “Melting the ice sheet on one pole raises sea level,” says Lenton, and the rise is greatest at the opposite pole. “Say you’re melting Greenland and you raise the sea level under the ice shelves of Antarctica,” he says. That would send ever more warm water lapping around Antarctica. “You’re going to weaken those ice shelves.”

“Even if the distance is quite far, a larger domino might still be able to cause the next one to tip over,” says Winkelmann.

In 2018, Juan Rocha of the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden and his colleagues mapped out all the known links between tipping points. However, Rocha says the strengths of the interconnections are still largely unknown. This, combined with the sheer number of them, and the interactions between the climate and the biosphere, means predicting the Earth’s overall response to our greenhouse gas emissions is very tricky.

Into the hothouse

The most worrying possibility is that setting off one tipping point could unleash several of the others, pushing Earth’s climate into a new state that it has not experienced for millions of years.

Since before humans existed, Earth has had an “icehouse” climate, meaning there is permanent ice at both poles. But millions of years ago, the climate was in a “hothouse” state: there was no permanent polar ice, and the planet was many degrees warmer.

‘Hothouse’ conditions will make fires such as this one in the San Gabriel mountains above Azusa, California, in August more frequent.

If it has happened before, could it happen again? In 2018, researchers including Lenton and Winkelmann explored the question in a much-discussed study. “The Earth System may be approaching a planetary threshold that could lock in a continuing rapid pathway toward much hotter conditions – Hothouse Earth,” they wrote. The danger threshold might be only decades away at current rates of warming.

Lenton says the jury is still out on whether this global threshold exists, let alone how close it is, but that it is not something that should be dismissed out of hand.

“For me, the strongest evidence base at the moment is for the idea that we could be committing to a ‘wethouse’, rather than a hothouse,” says Lenton. “We could see a cascade of ice sheet collapses.” This would lead to “a world that has no substantive ice in the northern hemisphere and a lot less over Antarctica, and the sea level is 10 to 20 metres higher”. Such a rise would be enough to swamp many coastal megacities, unless they were protected. The destruction of both the polar ice sheets would be mediated by the weakening or collapse of the AMOC, which would also weaken the Indian monsoon and disrupt the west African one.

Winkelmann’s team studied a similar scenario in a study published online in April, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. They simulated the interactions between the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets, the AMOC, the Amazon rainforest and another major weather system called the El Niño southern oscillation. They found that the two ice sheets were the most likely to trigger cascades, and the AMOC then transmitted their effects around the globe.

What to do?

Everyone who studies tipping point cascades agrees on two key points. The first is that it is crucial not to become disheartened by the magnitude of the risks; it is still possible to avoid knocking over the dominoes. Second, we should not wait for precise knowledge of exactly where the tipping points lie – which has proved difficult to determine, and might not come until it’s too late.

Rocha compares it to smoking. “Smoking causes cancer,” he says, “but it’s very difficult for a doctor to nail down how many cigarettes you need to smoke to get cancer.” Some people are more susceptible than others, based on a range of factors from genetics to the level of air pollution where they live. But this does not mean it is a good idea to play chicken with your lungs by continuing to smoke. “Don’t smoke long-term, because you might be committing to something you don’t want to,” says Rocha. The same logic applies to the climate dominoes. “If it happens, it’s going to be really costly and hard to recover, therefore we should not disturb those thresholds.”

“I think a precautionary principle probably is the best step forward for us, especially when we’re dealing with a system that we know has a lot of feedbacks and interconnections,” agrees Suding.

“These are huge risks we’re playing with, in their potential impacts,” says Lenton. “This is yet another compulsion to get ourselves weaned off fossil fuels as fast as possible and on to clean energy, and sort out some other sources of greenhouse gases like diets and land use,” says Lenton. He emphasises that the tipping points for the two great ice sheets may well lie between 1C and 2C of warming.

“We actually do need the Paris climate accord,” says Winkelmann. The 2016 agreement committed most countries to limit warming to 1.5 to 2C, although the US president, Donald Trump, has since chosen to pull the US out of it. Winkelmann argues that 1.5C is the right target, because it takes into account the existence of the tipping points and gives the best chance of avoiding them. “For some of these tipping elements,” she says, “we’re already in that danger zone.”

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not a surprising or original solution. But it is our best chance to stop the warning signs flashing red.

Japan: AffECS Advantage: Entrapment ScenarioJapan Escalation NowU.S. backing in the Senkakus emboldens Japan and makes their initiation of a crisis highly likely.

Narang and Mehta 19 – Narang; Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Mehta; Ph.D. in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.

Narang, Neil, and Rupal N. Mehta. “The Unforeseen Consequences of Extended Deterrence: Moral Hazard in a Nuclear Client State.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 63, no. 1 (January 2019): 218–50. doi:10.1177/0022002717729025. **NCC Packet 2020

*figures omitted but at link source

The ongoing dispute in the East China Sea over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands has rekindled tensions in United States–Japan–China relations. In particular, recent public affirmations of the US security guarantee to protect Japan in the event of a war with China have raised the specter of conflict in East Asia. Indeed, journalists in China have increasingly viewed the US alliance with Japan (and the Philippines) as both threatening to regional stability and its own rise in East Asia. For example, one recent editorial stated, “...it is increasingly obvious that Washington is taking Beijing as an opponent.”1 Another editorial went one step further, suggesting that Japan may be using its relationship with the United States to aggressively further its own objectives: “Japan is taking advantage of American greed to cause trouble with its neighbors (i.e., China) in the Asia-Pacific region. China’s peaceful rise will not be constrained by any other country...” In response to perceptions of Japanese revisionism, Chinese strategists have increasingly called on the United States to “publicly limit extended nuclear deterrence” out of fear that such commitments may embolden Washington’s allies (Li Bin and He Yun 2012). Similarly, Rapp Hooper (2015) argues that the United States would be unwise in deepening its commitments to extended nuclear deterrence, because:...doing so may create a moral hazard problem, encouraging allies to press their claims with more confidence. Knowing that they have guaranteed backing, Tokyo or Manila may grow more assertive in disputes with Beijing...This, in turn, could cause crisis escalation or conflict that might otherwise have been avoided. (p. 139)

The crisis between China and its rivals in East Asia raises important questions about the US nuclear security guarantees in the region and about the inadvertent consequences of extended deterrence more generally. Has the US commitment to defend its allies in East Asia actually encouraged its clients to press their claims where they wouldn’t otherwise in the absence of the US “nuclear umbrella”? More generally, is it possible that commitments to extended deterrence create a moral hazard problem, whereby client states protected under a nuclear umbrella are emboldened to become more revisionary—pressing their demands in anticipation that a patron will intervene, and thereby perversely increasing the risk of a crisis? In this article, we explore the relationship between nuclear umbrellas, militarized conflict, and crisis bargaining. Drawing on existing bargaining theories of war, we argue that, because war is costly, both parties in a crisis have an incentive to avoid fighting. This implies that—in equilibrium—the impact of a nuclear umbrella on the risk of war between a client state protected under a nuclear umbrella and a potential target should generally be zero, assuming information is complete, commitments are credible, and the stakes are divisible. However, this does not mean that such commitments are benign, or that they pose no risk to potential targets and nuclear patrons. Instead, we argue that a client state’s expectation that its power will be augmented in the event of war (by that of its nuclear patron) will make it more likely to expand the scope of its demands and seek to revise the status quo. Because war is generally ex post inefficient, leaders of target states are likely to offer concessions in the amount that reflects the changed balance of power, rather than fight a costly war. Thus, we argue that the risk of moral hazard from nuclear umbrellas should be observable in the bargaining outcomes short of war, if not in the observable patterns of militarized conflict.

We begin by investigating whether nuclear umbrellas generate a risk of moral hazard by increasing the risk of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). We find evidence that protection under a nuclear umbrella slightly increases the risk that a client state protected under a nuclear umbrella will initiate an MID compared to a state that lacks this protection. However, we find that this overall effect is driven entirely by one-sided use of force initiated by the client state protected under a nuclear umbrella that never escalates to the reciprocal use of force by the target state. At the same time that targets appear to avoid the reciprocal use of force, we find strong evidence that a client state’s protection under a nuclear umbrella is positively associated with the likelihood that a crisis will include a peaceful settlement attempt and an increased likelihood that a target will offer policy concessions to the client state. Together, the results along both dimensions—conflict and bargaining outcomes—are consistent with the observable implications of the theory. The remainder of this article proceeds as follows. We begin by examining some of the extant research on alliances and entrapment or moral hazard. We then develop our theory for why, despite the conventional wisdom that security guarantees increase the likelihood of war, we should expect that—if a risk of moral hazard exists—the consequences should be observable in the terms of negotiated settlements or concessions short of war. Next, we introduce the research design and data we use to test our hypotheses. We then present our results and discuss our main findings. Following the large-n results, we examine an illustrative case of the hypothesized mechanism in the United States-Republic of China (ROC)/Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT).Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the policy implications.

Alliances, Entrapment, and the Risk of War

The existing literature on the causes and consequences of military alliances in international relations makes a compelling case for the general risk of moral hazard in the behavior of states protected under defensive security commitments. According to the conventional logic, alliances can increase the combined bargaining power of allied states by augmenting the military capabilities of each state with that of the other (Morrow 1994, 2000; Lake 2001; Leeds 2000, 2003). Two benefits are thought to follow: first, assuming sides are unable to settle their disputes, the formation of an alliance shifts the likely outcome of war in favor of the allied states; second, the prospect that a state will intervene on behalf of an alliance partner may deter a potential challenger from initiating a crisis in the first place (Huth 1988, 1990; Leeds 2003; Johnson and Leeds 2011)

Along with these benefits, however, comes at least one important consequence. At the same time that alliances can deter potential challenges, states protected under the alliance may become emboldened to expand the scope of their demands or to become intransigent in ongoing negotiations with other states. In this way, a conventional wisdom holds that alliance commitments can actually increase the risk of war by emboldening an alliance partner to demand more from other states and run a greater risk of war in expectation of an ally coming to its aid (Snyder 1984; Jervis 1994; Smith 1995; Leeds 2003; Zagare and Kilgour 2003; Yuen 2009; Benson 2011, 2012; Kim 2011; Benson, Bentley, and Ray 2013; Benson, Meirowitz, and Ramsay 2014). According to Snyder (1984), this classic moral hazard problem is one reason why states attempt to leave their security commitments purposely ambiguous to avoid the risk of “entrapment.”2

Despite the large volume of research on alliances, this logic of moral hazard and entrapment has yet to be investigated with respect to the specific case of nuclear umbrellas—a type of alliance in which a state with nuclear weapons makes a commitment to defend a nonnuclear alliance partner in the event of an attack.3 In particular, researchers have yet to systematically analyze whether nuclear umbrellas, otherwise known as “nuclear security assurances” or “commitments to extended deterrence” have the unintended side effect of increasing the risk of conflict.4 This is surprising, given that such assurances have long been a centerpiece of defense policy for major powers like the United States and Soviet Union (Lay 1953). The lack of empirical evidence notwithstanding, the logic of moral hazard has led many scholars to warn against the potentially perverse side effects of nuclear umbrellas (Knopf 2012). Although nuclear umbrellas vary in important ways from conventional alliances—possibly including the requirement that a crisis escalate to the use of nonconventional capabilities (V. Narang 2013) —nuclear security guarantees are analogous to conventional alliances in that they require a patron to defend nonnuclear alliance partners in the event of an attack. Thus, nuclear umbrellas may inadvertently enhance the risk of war by dramatically shifting the likely outcome of war in favor of a client state, thereby emboldening a client state to expand the scope of its demands by targeting new states or to become intransigent in ongoing negotiations. In doing so, client states may expect to entrap their nuclear patrons into undertaking costly actions—often risking the initiation of militarized conflict—to defend them against aggressors (Snyder 1984, 1997; Christensen and Snyder 1990; Yuen 2009; Fearon 1997; Crawford 2003, 2005).

This conventional logic—and its application to nuclear umbrellas by security strategists—leads to the following hypotheses about the relationship between nuclear umbrellas and crisis initiation and escalation through moral hazard:

Hypothesis 1: Nonnuclear client states protected in an alliance by a nuclear weapon state are more likely than states that lack a nuclear patron to initiate a conventional militarized dispute (MID).

Hypothesis 2: Nonnuclear client states protected in an alliance by a nuclear weapon state are more likely than states that lack a nuclear patron to escalate a conventional militarized dispute (MID).

Nuclear Umbrellas, Moral Hazard, and Crisis Bargaining In contrast to the conventional expectations above, we argue that it is unlikely that a client state protected under a nuclear umbrella will exhibit a greater propensity to engage in violent conflict. This is not because nuclear weapons have no impact on crises, nor is it because the logic of moral hazard in alliance politics does not apply in the specific domain of extended nuclear deterrence. Rather, we follow Gartzke and Jo (2009) in positing that the perverse consequence of moral hazard from nuclear security assurances will be observable in the crisis bargaining and subsequent distribution of benefits within negotiated settlements, if not the likelihood of violent conflict.

Consider the simplest model of crisis bargaining. Fearon (1995) suggests that coherent rationalist explanations for war will fall into one of two categories: actors can fail to find a settlement because they have private information with incentives to misrepresent or because they are unable to credibly commit to the agreement. According to the first explanation, sides have asymmetric information about their own capabilities and resolve and they often have an incentive to misrepresent their ability on these dimensions to secure a better settlement. As a result, while the costs of fighting open a range of settlements both sides should prefer to war, sides also have the incentive to bluff in order to shift the bargaining range in their favor (N. Narang 2015). The second explanation is that sides may prefer to fight now if their opponent is unlikely to honor a settlement in the future (Fearon 1998; Fortna 2003; Leeds 2000; Narang 2014; Walter 1997). The bargaining logic of war has important observable implications for the impact of nuclear weapons and—by extension—nuclear umbrellas on crisis outcomes. Historically, states that have acquired nuclear weapons have generally been quick to reveal their newfound capability, so the risk of bargaining failure from private information about these capabilities is relatively remote.5 Furthermore, doubts about the credibility of a nuclear rival’s commitment to a negotiated settlement are unlikely to be sufficient to motivate a game-ending nuclear war. Together, the conditions under which crisis bargaining occurs between nuclear states—or asymmetrically between nuclear states and nonnuclear states—highly incentivizes a negotiated settlement. As Jervis (1976, 96) notes, “no country could win an all-out nuclear war, not only in the sense of coming out of the war better than it went in, but in the sense of being better off fighting than making the concessions needed to avoid the conflict.”

However, it also follows that, even if nuclear weapons may reduce the danger of war in some circumstances, they should nonetheless influence shared beliefs about the distribution of power among states. A state whose power increases through the acquisition of nuclear weapons may be emboldened to revise the status quo in its favor by threatening war to extract concessions—a threat that would be credible if the status quo distribution of benefits falls outside of an expanded and shifted range of mutually acceptable agreements. Thus, while nuclear weapons may have no effect on the observable incidence of militarized conflict, they should increase the bargaining power of the nuclear capable state, which could in turn lead to substantial effects on other policy dimensions.

As Gartzke and Jo (2009, 209) explain, “Diplomatic bargains tend to dampen the observable impact of nuclear weapons... . To the degree that nuclear weapons influence the concessions proliferators are likely to obtain in lieu of force, proliferation does much less to account for behavioral conflict.” One clear source of evidence that leaders “err in equilibrium” toward negotiated settlements is that war is rare (and nuclear war even more rare). Another source of evidence is a state’s level of diplomatic influence, which Gartzke and Jo show to increase significantly for nuclear-capable states.

This same logic may extend beyond a state’s own nuclear capability to that of a client state protected under a nuclear umbrella. Recall that the intended purpose of a nuclear security assurance is to reduce the utility of nuclear weapons in coercive bargaining by deterring potential adversaries from threatening war, including nuclear war, against an ally (Fuhrmann and Sechser 2014b).6 However, in joining the military capabilities of a nonnuclear state with the capabilities of a nuclear state, the alliance increases the combined bargaining power of the allied states relative to a third party. This may, in turn, embolden a nuclear client to spark a crisis and demand more policy concessions from other states in expectation of an ally coming to its aid. When potential target states believe the nuclear umbrella to be credible, they are likely to offer concessions sufficient to deter the initiation and escalation of a crisis. Thus, we hypothesize that although nuclear umbrellas may not create a moral hazard problem with respect to observable patterns in militarized conflict, they may nevertheless create a moral hazard with respect to client states’ willingness and ability to either spark a crisis in order to actively extract or passively receive, greater policy concessions from potential target states. We investigate the following observable implications that uniquely follow from our argument.

Hypothesis 3: Nonnuclear client states protected in an alliance by a nuclearweapon state are more likely to obtain preferred policies peacefully compared to nonnuclear-weapon states without protection under a nuclear umbrella.

Gartzke and Jo (2