If You Really Think Trump Is Favored in 2020, You Haven’t Thought It Through
By: Adam Powell
Tags: Bernie Sanders, Politics, Trump, Elections, Democracy

Photo by Darren Halstead on Unsplash

[NOTE: Six months later this story is still being sent around, and virtually everything in it is out of date. A few times I’ve thought about revising it based on new information, but I decided it would be better to leave it as it was originally, so the predictions can be revisited after the election. Keep in mind that it was written before the pandemic, before George Floyd, and everything else that has changed the race since then.]

A recent poll from Monmouth found that two out of three Americans think Trump will win re-election this fall. That poll found, though it didn’t report, that two out of three Americans are wrong.

It does often appear these days that a second Trump term is inevitable, because he can do anything he wants and no one can find a way to make him pay for it. No one can stop him in office, so how can anyone stop him from staying in office? We may be stuck with him until he feels like leaving — which is never, according to him.

All of that is an illusion and a misdirection. What the politicians in Washington do is foolish and pitiable, but more importantly it’s only part of the story. The voters are the only ones who haven’t yet been given an opportunity to stop Trump. But that opportunity is coming soon, and they do intend to exercise it.

If it looks to you like Trump is cruising to victory in November, then either you want it too badly, or you’re too afraid of it to see clearly. Consider this argument:

Trump squeaked out his victory in the Electoral College by the smallest of margins, despite losing the popular vote by a large amount. If he loses any voters from battleground states in 2020, he must make them up somewhere else, or he loses the election. Trump was aided in 2016 by several highly unlikely events which will not be repeated in 2020 … suggesting he will lose voters compared to his first campaign. Trump’s approval ratings have never been higher than when he was elected, suggesting he has lost people who voted for him the first time. Democratic turnout will be higher in 2020 than it was in 2016. Therefore Trump can’t make up the voters he has lost since 2016. Therefore Trump will lose in 2020.

Premise 1 — The Electoral College

I hear the shouts already: “ELECTORAL COLLEGE! ELECTORAL COLLEGE!” And it’s true, I’ve also seen the analyses suggesting that Trump could lose the popular vote by as much as 5% and still win re-election. So this is an objection to the first premise: the claim is that Trump actually could lose voters compared to last time, and still get re-elected.

Fine, let’s do the Electoral College first.

The results of the Electoral College depend on the popular vote in each state. Trump won several states in 2016 by fairly small margins. He won Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin by less than 2%. How are those states polling now? [Update: Obviously Trump’s choices are significantly reduced since this was first written, when there were still six viable candidates in the race.]

Michigan: Trump is losing to all of the top five Democratic candidates, generally by significant margins.

Florida: Trump loses to Biden, beats Bloomberg, runs neck-and-neck with Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg.

Pennsylvania: Trump loses to Biden and Sanders, and is maybe slightly behind Warren. For Buttigieg and Bloomberg, there aren’t enough polls.

Wisconsin: Trump loses to Biden and Sanders, beats Buttigieg, and appears to be even with Warren, or slightly behind. Not enough polls for Klobuchar and Bloomberg.

Even if Trump wins every other state he won in 2016, he needs to face either Buttigieg or Klobuchar to have a good chance to win the election. There are other states he could easily lose.

Arizona: Trump won in 2016 by 3.6%. His approval rating is underwater by 1% — a swing of 4.6% toward the Democrats.

Georgia: Trump won it by 5% in 2016, but his approval rating now is even.

Iowa: Trump won it by 9.4% in 2016, but now his approval rating is underwater by 9%.

North Carolina: Trump won it in 2016 by 3.7%, but he’s down by 1% now.

Ohio: Trump won it by 8.1%, but he’s down by 1% now.

These numbers came from a report by The Daily Wire, so the true picture could be even worse for Trump. Obviously, approval numbers are not the same as head-to-head polls — if the eventual Democratic candidate has even lower numbers than Trump in these states, Trump could still win. But the trends suggest that Trump is losing voters in these states, in numbers that could end up flipping the 2016 results.

Looking at the electoral map from 2016, the Democrats have several different plausible ways to flip enough states to win, but Trump has only one way to win. He has to hold onto everything he won by more than 2%, plus at least two of the four toss-up states. A couple of the states Trump needed last time might already be out of reach. The Democrats need 43 more electoral votes than they got in 2016. Florida and Michigan would be enough. Florida and Pennsylvania would be enough. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin would be enough. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina would be enough. Arizona, Georgia and Michigan would be enough. Ohio, Georgia and Wisconsin would be enough. Texas and Iowa would be enough.

What’s Trump’s best plan for picking off some Democratic states? New Mexico and Minnesota, where his approval ratings are currently negative by ten points and seven points respectively. New Hampshire? Minus 12. Nevada? Minus 15.

Premise 2 — Lightning Strikes Twice?

Go back to 2016. The presidential election featured the top two least popular major candidates ever. The least popular candidate of all won the contest, due to a staggering number of highly unlikely factors that all fell into place before the end.

Trump faced the least popular major candidate ever, other than himself. His opponent in 2020 will most likely be more popular than Clinton. The leading Democratic candidates are all significantly more popular than Trump at the moment. Two significant third-party candidates ran in 2016. One of them took votes almost exclusively from Hillary Clinton, and one of them took votes from both candidates in roughly equal numbers. Clinton lost support due to a high-profile FBI investigation that ultimately turned up nothing, but kept voters speculating about possible criminal activity up until the weekend before the election. Clinton was damaged by a steady stream of leaked emails that were stolen from her campaign chair by foreign intelligence agents, and released to the media by WikiLeaks. Trump was aided by a long-term influence campaign out of Russia, which spread false information and propaganda aimed at discouraging Democratic voters and motivating conservative turnout. Conservative turnout generally stayed level with 2012, but Democratic turnout was much lower, because most of the country believed Clinton would win easily. But overall the turnout was the lowest for any presidential election in 20 years. Clinton ran an extraordinarily complacent campaign jammed with astonishingly foolish decisions, the worst of which was to stay away from Wisconsin entirely, while Trump visited the state multiple times. Clinton left the campaign trail completely in August for about two weeks, during a time when Trump was doing multiple events every day. Trump was on course to lose big in 2016 until he hired Steve Bannon. Bannon turned the entire campaign around and delivered the victory.

None of these things is likely to happen again in 2020. The Russians will spread lies, for sure. The misinformation will be more pervasive than last time. But who will fall for it? We already know what they’re doing. If anything, Russian interference will turn off moderate voters who might still be on the fence.

Trump won’t have Steve Bannon in charge of his campaign. This time he has Brad Parscale, who used to make websites for a living.

Whoever the Democratic candidate turns out to be, we won’t have a replay of Clinton’s hapless campaign. The Democrat will campaign hard in every battleground state, and Trump is already behind in most of them.

Will Trump try to steal someone’s emails? Probably, but he probably won’t succeed. Everyone saw what happened the last time, and they know how to prevent it. Trump could order an FBI investigation into his eventual opponent, and he might actually get it. But it would most likely end up costing him votes. People would see it as a brazenly autocratic attempt to re-create the magic of 2016, and another reason to get Trump out of office while we have the chance.

As far as we know, no one is preparing an independent run in 2020, and at this point it’s too late to build a campaign on the level of what Jill Stein or Gary Johnson had in 2016. There won’t be a third-party candidate siphoning votes from the Democrat.

Polls for the past year or so have been indicating high turnouts on both sides for 2020. But turnout was already high among Trump’s base in 2016. He doesn’t have a lot of room for improvement. On the other hand, the Democrats will improve considerably over 2016, as the 2018 midterms proved. And the indications are that Trump has continued to lose support among suburban voters across the country.

Trump’s plan is to turn out his base, in even higher numbers than in 2016. He might do it. But it will be like squeezing the last drops of water out of a damp towel. He already turned out his base once, and he needed every vote he could get. Meanwhile there are millions of Democratic voters who did not vote in 2016, but will be highly motivated to come out this year. They’ve had four years to blame themselves for losing.

As an added bonus for the Democrat, Generation Z is now four years older than in 2016, and some of them are now voting. In 2016 the turnout among younger voters was lower than it should have been, probably because they all wanted Bernie Sanders and he didn’t get the nomination. In 2020 it’s looking to be significantly higher. [Update: After Super Tuesday, the young voter turnout is looking a lot less reliable.] And in the 2018 midterms, Democratic congressional candidates won 67% of the vote from people between 18 and 29 years old.

Premise 3 — Has Trump Gained Support?

Morning Consult has a collection of charts showing the state-by-state trends in President Trump’s net approval ratings, since he was inaugurated up to January 2020. Take a guess at how many states show lower approval ratings for Trump now, compared to three years ago.

All of them. His net approval ratings are lower in all 50 states. Most states show a steep drop-off in the first few months, and then small back-and-forth fluctuations since then. Trump’s approval rating has fallen by double digits in 49 states. Idaho has the smallest net change, at six points. Trump’s ratings have fallen by 20 points or more in 16 states — including Michigan and Florida, which he barely won in 2016 and absolutely needs to hold in 2020.

Again, approval ratings are not the same as head-to-head polls. Some of these people who disapprove might still end up voting for Trump. But these are net changes over time. They indicate a massive loss of support for Trump since he was elected, across every state in the country. The numbers have been steady for three years and are not showing any signs of changing.

Premise 4 — Will the Democrats Really Show Up This Time?

There’s been a lot of recent talk about how Bernie Sanders’ supporters sat out the general election in 2016, and they’ll probably do it again in 2020. We’ll have no way of knowing unless it actually happens. But first Sanders actually has to lose the nomination. [Update: It looks like he will.]

If he wins, will there be moderate Democrats who will sit out, or vote for Trump instead? Maybe Joe Manchin. Everyone else will hold their nose and vote for Bernie, the same way moderate Republicans held their nose and voted for Trump. A lot of Christian conservatives with Biblical values voted for Trump only because they wanted more anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court. They got their way, and now abortion rights in America are seriously endangered. When moderate Democrats look at a choice between Bernie Sanders and potentially a 7–2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, they’ll vote for Bernie.

What if Bernie loses? Some of his supporters may sit out. It won’t be as many as last time, because they won’t be able to make the same argument about the primaries being rigged against him. The Democratic establishment is [Update: was] helping Bernie sail toward the nomination, by splitting the moderate vote among three candidates. If he loses, it’ll be because he lost it fair and square.

In 2016, Bernie voters sat out because they were more angry at Clinton than they were at Trump. In 2020, they’ll be more angry at Trump than anyone else.

In general, analysts are predicting a historically large turnout in 2020. Turnout was huge in 2018, even when Trump wasn’t on the ballot. Turnout was the highest in history for the New Hampshire primary last week. And Nevada reported huge numbers in early voting, potentially big enough to break the overall turnout record from 2008.

Conclusions: Trump Has No Path to Victory

Trump’s big problem is that he’s the one driving Democratic turnout. Democrats have been showing up to vote in ever-greater numbers for the past three years, specifically because they can’t stand having Trump as their President. They’re not united behind anyone on their own side. No Democratic candidate even has steady support from a quarter of the Democratic voters, while Trump has support from more than 90% of the Republicans. The polls will be overrun by Democrats in 2020, solely because they want to vote Trump out.

So he’s caught in a dilemma. He can take himself off the ticket, and let someone else be President. Or he can run for re-election, and get beaten by superior numbers. Those are his two choices.

In my original argument, premises 2, 3, and 4 lead directly to the first conclusion in line 5. And that conclusion along with premise 1 gives us the second conclusion: Trump will lose in 2020.