President Trump is not a normal politician for many reasons. His ability to connect with crowds is amazing. He has a good sense of humor and an exquisite sense of comedic timing. He is always positive, even in the most dire personal circumstances. He is a man of his people and for his people.

The Democrats are worried about polls, as they should be. Trump is about even in the polls, which has never been the case in previous elections this far out from election day. Those of us who support Trump often do not understand why he struggles in the polls. There is no doubt that polling has never really shown his support with accuracy. Why not?

Normal politicians play a polling game that sees their polling fortunes rising and falling like a wave on the sea, with the latest good interview or horrible gaffe determining whether it is up or down. It is the judge of success before the election. Trump seems to care for none of that except for the rare times that he talks about what he calls his “ratings.”

Photo of a rachet by Anton Ehrola. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Trump understands that there is something more powerful than polls and ratings, which no poll can easily detect. He wants to connect with every supporter so that, once they accept him, they cannot easily be stripped away. It is much harder to earn this type of support, but it will still be there after a bad day or a stumble in an interview. Rush said it. “The media cannot break what they did not make.” It was true for Rush, and it is true for President Trump.

This creates what I call the Trump Ratchet. All the new supporters make a conscious decision to attach themselves to Trump. The supporters become part of the team in a permanent way. It is like the click of a ratchet, always in the same direction and never backward.

What President Trump does is quite different. He knows that he is asking a lot more from people than the promise of a vote. Instead of riding a wave, he wants to have supporters who make a deep commitment to him and his policies. It is a decision that requires not just supporting but joining. It is a hard-choice decision that, once made, is difficult to break. The support may start low, but every decision is another click of the ratchet. It rarely moves backward.

A regular politician will rise and fall in waves based on the day’s news. The hope is that, at the moment they vote, people will be on the politician’s side. The politicians try to ride this wave and be at the top at the right time. It is normal politics.

This happened in 2016, and it is happening again. It was there in 2020, but because Trump was an incumbent, it was not enough to completely obliterate his opposition.  His opponents in 2020 were successful in getting Trump to respond more like a typical politician. The tragedies of the Covid pandemic, the Summer of Love, and the ridiculous voting irregularities forced him to run as a normal politician for much of the campaign. That is not his strength.

This movement and attachment explain the polling inaccuracy concerning Trump. Some voters wait until very late to decide on this level of commitment. In a normal year with normal politicians, these “breaking independents” will break in both directions, but not with a candidate like Trump.

Some will choose Trump at the last second, but almost none will turn away. There is movement in only one direction. That is the reason that the Democrats fear what is to come. They know Trump will not lose very many supporters when they vote, but he will gain many. Maybe he will gain enough to beat both the candidate and the system. Beating the system almost requires this unseen movement. They cannot know how much they need until it is too late. It changes defeating voting irregularities into the realm of the possible.

I think the hidden, last-second movement will be greater this year than in 2016. The Democrats started late as part of their strategy, meaning the final movements will appear later in the campaign. The lawfare and other disruptions to the campaign have created supporters who moved to President Trump and remain solidly locked in place.

It is millions of clicks in the ratchet with many more on the edge of support and not quite clicking just yet. Every survived assassination attempt, every lawfare win, and every presidential-looking public appearance moves support in one direction only. And the Democrats have nothing except deviousness to counteract it.

And the Democrats know it.

Click, click, click.