My totally unscientific method for gauging Trump’s strength would probably be to use the midpoint between economic optimism and his overall approval rating. IIRC, his approval is somewhere around 41-42 while the overall economic optimism is somewhere in the low 50s. The reason why I think he could actually get more votes (in terms of percentage) is that there might be some late-breakers, which was the case in 2016. One of the reasons why the polls were “wrong” is due to the fact that there were 3rd and 4th party candidates who, though they had no chance in hell of winning, were strong enough to make forecasting challenging.
I think that if the economy tanks, or if for some other as-yet unknown reason to give people the sense that the country’s going in the wrong direction, I suspect that about 5-10% at the weaker end of his base will peel away. They won’t vote for a democrat, but they’ll either stay home and not vote or vote 3rd party out of protest. The reason why impeachment doesn’t appear to be going anywhere is because in the minds of voters, there’s no real reason to remove the president in terms that are meaningful to them as individual voters.
However, I won’t call impeachment a waste because it’s putting seeds in the minds of voters. It’s reminding voters that Donald Trump is a bully and a dick, and if he can’t deliver on the economy, then there is absolutely no reason to put him back in office in 2020. It’s Donald Trump’s culture warrior base, and it’s the economy - that’s what’s giving him at least a 50/50 chance to win the EC.
I agree there’s no reason for him to debate. (Wait… when has reason ever figured into a decision of his… hmmm…). In any case, instead of debates, he will probably just hold MAGA-rallies. Guaranteed wins there.
I predict that Trump’s inevitable impeachment won’t result in a conviction in the Senate.
But I think that this will result in further infuriating the majority of Americans who, even if they don’t follow politics closely, see Trump as an ignorant buffoon and are sick of him as President.
And, in my opinion, what determines the election result is the energy of a party’s base and its enthusiasm to vote. Which is to say that Dems are frothing at the bit to vote Trump out, and his acquittal will exacerbate that eagerness, leading to a massive turnout against the incumbent.
The Democrats would have to do serious internal damage to sabotage that energy.
I’m seeing it from a different perspective. The impeachment, if it actually happens (probably), will energize and increase the republican turnout. While they may not all like Trump, they will hold their noses and vote for him against all contenders.
Its inevitable failure is going to piss off the anybody-but-Trump bloc. Their problem is that they won’t unify behind a single candidate. This already happened in 2016 and there are still people bitching about how the nomination was stolen from Sanders. Whether you agree it was stolen or not, there are still a lot of butt-hurt Bernie-bros out there. Not singling them out as a group that will vote against the nominee, but rather as an example of the unwillingness of significant numbers to go against their own ideology against a common foe.
Here’s the kind of dirty tricks the GOP is gonna use:
*Starting after the Primary, the RPT will generate microsites for negative hits against the Democrat candidates in our twelve target race—we expect each microsite to be roughly $500,” the document, which was obtained by the Dallas Morning News, reads.
The websites, according to the document, will mimic the names of Democratic candidates, and will reroute to pages featuring attack ads on those same individuals.*
I’d rather not go for a binary this early in the game. Even with a failed impeachment on him as **Projammer **explains, he ***can ***win as things stand and things are not going to change to disarm his side in the next 10 months.
This GOP electoral college advantage is real, but can be exaggerated. The way I read the graph in my next link, the Democrat could lose the popular vote by maybe 200,000 votes and still have a 20 percent chance of victory:
As for prediction, the power of presidential incumbency is real, unless and until there is an undisputed recession. On the other hand, Donald Trump is a weak candidate due to lack of popularity. Add it up, and I see no rational way to predict a winner.
My only prediction is that on Wednesday November 4, 2020, DJT will say he won.
The election of 2020 will be a referendum on an incumbent’s presidency, an electorate’s summative assessment of the state of our union. For the most part, the vote will reflect our general economic optimism, though national security could also be a factor.
Donald Trump has a historically low approval rate, which leads us to believe that he’ll lose. But the fact is that people aren’t too thrilled about national politics and there’s not a single candidate running who stands out as being able to build a broad coalition other than Joe Biden, who has some serious vulnerabilities as we already well know.
Probably 90% of voters will have made up their minds about the election as early as the national conventions. The election will be decided by the mood of the electorate and the events that happen in the last 8-12 weeks.
His chances are consistently 50/50 - perhaps less than 50% during bad stretches and slightly greater than 50% during relatively calm, stable news cycles, which is why I agree: it’s just too early to tell right now.
As time passes, I’m increasingly thinking the next election will truly be a bellweather indicating the future path for America.
If America is unable to mobilize a majority - at least in the few decisive states - to act upon a belief to indicate that the politics of the current president and Senate majority DO NOT reflect American ideals, then we’ll have to take a close look in the mirror and re-assess exactly what IS important to America. Give them 4 more years to further pack the courts and roll back regulations and environmental protections, and the hole will be much more difficult for future generations to climb out of.
Meanwhile, there will be a large number of young people for whom this was the only example of presidential behavior and political behavior that they were aware of through their high school and college years…
Right now, unless the economy tanks - which I’m not foreseeing, in an even money bet, I’d bet on Trump to be re-elected.
I don’t know whether Trump and the GOP will actually succeed at ultimately destroying the republic as we know it, but they’re following exactly the steps that a nation takes to become undemocratic. And it’s the lack of apparent collective outrage that makes me pessimistic.
Compare Hong Kong to us, for instance. People in Hong Kong know they’re being scammed, but here, not enough of us do, and it’s because we’re becoming increasingly Balkanized by culture war, which is exactly how Donald Trump will win reelection if he manages to pull it off.
The only way that this small but rock solid core of constituencies can win is to redefine politics according to wealth, power, and cultural allegiances, which are predicated on the values of social hierarchy and cultural supremacy. If he wins reelection it will be because this toxic brand of ‘democratic’ politics has succeeded not once but twice.
The damage would last a generation at minimum, and probably longer than that.
I still believe he has the advantage and I do fear that this large field of democratic candidates lacks that one candidate who resembles someone with the full package of intelligence, charisma and presence. There are a lot of intelligent people but the American public rarely decides their vote on who is the most wonkiest and detailed. A guy I like a lot, Michael Bennet, really wise man but he’s not appeared on the debate stage since July.
The three democrats elected president in the past half century weren’t the ones people fell in line to vote for because the reason they got the nomination in the first place is people fell in love. You got to have some presence about you in your stage persona, and the fact is the one candidate who appears to come closest to it is a 37 year old mayor of the 306th largest city in America who has no traction with African American voters whatsoever. He was a nobody in terms of name recognition at the start of the year but he is ending it with the lead in Iowa.
The good thing I’m holding onto is Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 with fewer votes than Romney got when he lost Wisconsin in 2012. Turnout is going to decide it. Four years ago the turn out among democrats from 2012 was fatal but now they’ve seen what Trump has done on the job and a lot of the warnings Hillary Clinton gave, whether you liked her or hated her, have come into fruition.
A potential turning point, as Hong Kong protesters identify Trump’s infamous bizarro Rocky tweet as a symbol of their protests against China.
Despite all of his foreign policy blunders, this is his first real opportunity to look presidential in a way that resonates with American voters. His foreign policy in the Middle East is questionable. His anti-nuclear diplomacy with NK is a glaring failure. But this is a potential turning point because oppressed people identify Trump as a symbol of their resistance, which is an image that American voters can appreciate.
Furthermore, in a way, it gives a moral argument to his questionable economic policies, namely the trade war with China, which is potentially the biggest threat to his reelection. Whether it was intended or not, circumstances could align to give Trump some moral cover if critics start to use his trade policies as a causal factor in a future recession. His handlers will certainly try to push that argument.
One advantage that I see Trump having over all of the current front runners is the ability to project strength and power, which is what Americans typically want to see in a leader.
If we look at the map now, Trump would clearly lose to an unnamed generic Democrat and he’d probably lose to Biden. He’d be in trouble against Warren or Sanders and other potential nominees.
The problem is, presidents never run against imaginary candidates; they run against real ones, with real flaws and negatives of their own. And the opposition gets anywhere from 3-6 months to expose those weaknesses, which is something the diehard “Dems stole it from us, installed the worst candidate ever” Bernie Bros simply refuse to understand. Trump would have had just as much fun with Bernie as he had with Hillary, and then some. In the end, a president running for reelection typically ends up running against himself as much as anyone.
Trump will probably run against Biden, and he’ll be running against a Biden that will be exposed as old, confused, weak, and ineffectual. If he runs against Warren, he’ll be running against a bleeding heart who pretends to be a lady chieftain. If he runs against Mayor Pete, he’ll be running against a gay man. Any of these candidates will have to find ways to be stronger, more dominant than Trump, and that’s going to be very hard to do. Trump looks weak now; he will look much less so when he’s going one on one against a nominee, and in any case, voters will view the race as not just a contest of merit between two rivals but a referendum on the state of the country. Advantage Trump.
I am not hopeful that a generation reared in the era of Trumpism and anti-Trumpism can rescue American democracy and make it once more an inspiration to the world.
