Why Trump Will Likely Win a Second Term

[Frodo]

It's the Electoral College, and the imbalance of power and population between rural and urban states:

Why Donald Trump Will Likely Win A Second Term As President

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Of course he's favored, he's the incumbent, once Dems have a nominee, other than Clinton, things will change. Warren, Booker or Harris will put up a case against Trump

[junior chįmp]

No he wont.

[Progressive Pessimist]

He is favored because our country's institutions as a whole are outdated. Combine that with a poorly informed/misinformed populace and the low standards that Trump gets applied to him, and yes he can absolutely win again.

[TML]

This article probably assumes that the Democrats will put up another establishment candidate in 2020 who fails to inspire progressive base voters. As long as the Democrats avoid that mistake by nominating a progressive populist, they should be fine.

[Sir Mohamed]

Nah, I'd give him a 33% chance at the very best. All Dems have to do is win back MI/PA/WI. FL and AZ are toss-ups as well and OH, IA and NC are within reach. Especially if his stupid tradewar continues, that hurts IA farmers. Don't also forget that he's already struggling with a good economy. If that goes down, Trump is done. Also possible another scandal drags him down. That's likely if Dems take the House.

I agree, of course, that we have to get rid of the EC. It's deeply undemocratic. Time that CA as largest state plays a bigger role.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Warren, Harris and Booker are likely going to the primaries and they're not Hilllary

[Politician]

If Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee, then sure.

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Harris, Booker, Gillibrand would all have a decent chance of losing. If the Dems nominate a charismatic candidate (Biden) or one with some solid policy positions (Warren, Sanders) they should be at least slightly favored.

[Orser67]

The article spends several paragraphs talking (persuasively) about why the Electoral College is unfair, but then spends just one (not-very-persuasive) paragraph explaining why Trump will probably win.

[Inmate Trump]

I think the likliest winning scenario for Trump is if Russia succeeds in actual vote tampering.  They tried and failed in 2016 but they will most certainly try again in 2020 and probably have better results since we haven’t done anything at all to counter them or, ya know, try to safeguard our elections.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I think the likliest winning scenario for Trump is if Russia succeeds in actual vote tampering.  They tried and failed in 2016 but they will most certainly try again in 2020 and probably have better results since we haven’t done anything at all to counter them or, ya know, try to safeguard our elections.

You actaully believes those DU conspiracies that unless something changes Trump can only really win if the election is hacked . They also believe Bush stole 2004 as well

[UncleSam]

Of course he is favored. He is  an incumbent president with a good economy and strong intraparty support. Ultimately the Dems will have to pick either a progressive or an establishment candidate and unless said candidate runs a great campaign to unite the party someone will be disenchanted.

Trump can only be beaten by a unified Democratic party standing behind a powerful nominee. Anything less and he will divide and destroy the Democrats far worse than he did in 2016.

[BlueSwan]

Assuming that the electoral college automatically benefits one party or one candidate is dangerous business. See the "272 Blue Wall of 2016", which basically made it seem more likely that it would be the democratic candidate who could lose the popular vote yet still win the EC, when exactly the opposite happened.

[MarkD]

So that article's main argument for why Trump will win a second term is because every state that voted for him in 2016 will likely vote for him again in 2020??
Another major point the article wants to make is we need to ditch the Electoral College as soon as possible. I don't disagree, but be politically realistic: a constitutional amendment to eliminate the electoral college is just plain not going to happen before 2020.
If it's true that Trump will win every state that he won before -- which I don't accept at all; I think he's going to lose most of the ones that he won last time; this is going to be a landslide loss (I keep saying) -- then as of now, Trump is a shoe-in for re-election, because the Electoral College is not going away within the next 1 to 1.5 years.

[Donald Trump’s Toupée]

If the economy is still roaring at record low numbers (and no actual criminal scandal, or major war happens) then yes. Absolutely he'll win re-election.

For what it's worth, unemployment numbers are predicted to dip to 3.3% in 2019 and 2020....An absolutely phenomenal number that would seal his re-election.

It's impressive to have had two consecutive years of prosperity, but if that continues for another 2 years, it will be hard for Trump to be voted out of office after 4 years of the strongest economy in generations, especially when its juxtaposed with the 2008 financial crisis and the Obama years of stagnation.

People vote with their pocketbooks.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

If the economy is still roaring at record low numbers (and no actual criminal scandal, or major war happens) then yes. Absolutely he'll win re-election.

For what it's worth, unemployment numbers are predicted to dip to 3.3% in 2019 and 2020....An absolutely phenomenal number that would seal his re-election.

It's impressive to have had two consecutive years of prosperity, but if that continues for another 2 years, it will be hard for Trump to be voted out of office after 4 years of the strongest economy in generations, especially when its juxtaposed with the 2008 financial crisis and the Obama years of stagnation.

People vote with their pocketbooks.

Tell that to Hiary when the same economy was roaring and she lost under an ethics cloud and Trump can be defeated with a 44% approval 😁

[Proto]

Trump will never win anything. He is a natural born loser.

[Grassroots]

No he wont.

This smugness amuses me 247.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

If electoral votes are proportionally distributed among how states have voted, it would make sure that every vote isn't wasted, while still slightly favouring rural states.

I think Trump is favoured to win a second term.

[pbrower2a]

Of course he is favored. He is  an incumbent president with a good economy and strong intraparty support. Ultimately the Dems will have to pick either a progressive or an establishment candidate and unless said candidate runs a great campaign to unite the party someone will be disenchanted.

Just because we have had three consecutive two-term Presidents does not mean that we have a pattern of 'incumbency wins' set in stone. The previous three Presidents consistently had approval numbers at or above 45%, which means that with even a lackluster campaign for re-election they would get re-elected. But that is at the national level.  

If he should win the same percentage of the vote in 2020 as he did in 2016, he loses unless the Democrats face a split of the vote on the Left side of the political spectrum. 45.93% of the popular vote (which Trump got) is less than

Romney 47.15%
Kerry 48.26%
Ford 48.01%
Nixon 49.55% (1960)

and little better than

McCain 45.60%
Dukakis 45.65%

...and he is closer to Adlai Stevenson in 1952 (44.43%) than he was to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Those three lost to winners who won 365, 426, and 457 electoral votes, respectively.  

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Trump is doing a fine job in uniting Democrats. He has gained only one constituency: well-heeled heels who thought that Hillary Clinton would be safer because she is not a populist demagogue. Of course, those people have the money. He has lost much else or has never had a big part of his 2016 electorate really in hand.
 

[pbrower2a]

If electoral votes are proportionally distributed among how states have voted, it would make sure that every vote isn't wasted, while still slightly favouring rural states.

I think Trump is favoured to win a second term.

He is not favored to win either Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin (his three closest wins), and he is not favored to win either Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine, or Nevada, his four closest losses. He can forget Colorado, Virginia, and New Mexico, the only other states that he lost by 10% or less. 

He is in trouble in every state that he won by less than 10%, the only such state that he has a good chance of winning is Texas. Texas straddles 400 electoral votes for a Democrat.

Trump wins if nothing has changed from 2016.  Much has. Let farm incomes fall in the Great Plains, and he could find himself losing states that Democrats usually concede before the election is underway.

[pbrower2a]

To see how Trump could lose, simply look at how Obama could have lost in 2012. Maybe the economy goes bad. Maybe a shaky ally has an anti-American revolution much as Iran did in 1979. Maybe he decides to use the treasury as a piggy bank for patronage or has a corruption scandal. Maybe he cheats on Michelle with a white woman who has a child by him. The states would not be the same, as America would still be highly polarized.  


It's really simple to figure how Obama would have done in 2012 had his approval numbers been 5% lower, which is about where I see Trump's approval numbers. Cut Obama's percentage of the vote by 5% and raise Romney by 3%, figuring that 2% would have gone to left-leaning  third-party nominees (Green, largely)

Obama, 10% or more
Obama, 5-9.9%
Obama under 5%
Romney under 5%
Romney 5-9.9%
Romney, 10% or more

Obama 187, 46% of the popular vote
Romney 351, 50% of the popular vote

As you can see, this hypothetical scenario would be nearly an inverse in the the numbers of electoral votes of 2012. of how things went in 2016.

So how do I see Trump doing if such a scenario applies to him? Figure that the Democrat does not lose so many votes to third-party, left-leaning nominees, that about 3% of usual Republican voters end up voting for third-party, right-leaning nominees, with the Democrat getting just over 50% of the popular vote and Trump getting about 46%, Basically, Trump loses everything that he lost in 2016 and everything that he won by 10% or less with the exception of Texas -- but Indiana, Missouri, and Montana get shaky for him.  

Again, margins, which I consider the real measure of winning and losing.


Democratic nominee, 10% or more
Democratic nominee, 5-9.9%
Democratic nominee under 5%
Trump under 5%
Trump, 5-9.9% -- not shown
Romney, 10% or more -- not shown

I'm using polling and not adjusting any previous election.

When the losing nominee gets 45% or so of the popular vote, strange things happen that start showing characteristics of an electoral blowout that rapidly diverges from the close Presidential elections to which we have been accustomed since 2000. The easiest thing to remember in accordance with what I have seen for polls for a very long time is that Texas straddles 400 electoral votes for a Democrat, which has been so since the 1992 Presidential election.

It's up to President Trump to shore up the approval numbers -- and more importantly, pare the horrid disapproval numbers that bedevil his Presidency. As a partisan Democrat, I lack the imagination to see how such is possible. Disapproval means giving up. I have no idea of what states would go to Trump by high single digits because the only ones that could are those that seem very solid for Republicans.

Yes, my model for an Obama loss is crude, but that is what one gets with an alternative history.