Why Trump Will Lose in 2020

Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. Less talked about is how narrow was his electoral college victory. To put that in perspective, he's the 45th president and 45 presidential elections were decided by a wider electoral college margin. Since his first day in office, his net approval across the 50 states has dropped by an average of 20 points. It is hard to imagine any scenario in which such a drop doesn't reverse his narrow margin of victory into a decisive loss.


Trump's approval rating has crashed since his first day in office. His net approval [footnote 1] across all 50 states has dropped by an average of 20 points since he took office, ranging from a drop of only 10 points [2]  to a drop of 33 points [3]. There is not a single state where his approval has gone up since he took office.

[graph with latest information at Morning Consult, here.]

He won 306 electoral votes in 2016, 38 more electoral votes than he needed to become president. That was a tight margin. (To put it in perspective, Trump is the 45th president and there have been 45 presidential elections decided by wider margins.)

I'm no scientist but I can't see how a margin of victory that slim can overcome a drop in approval rating of 20 points.

The states he won that have shifted from a net positive approval to a net negative represent 125 electoral votes. [4]

If all of those states shift from Trump to his opponent, he loses by 354 to 181, a victory roughly equivalent to Obama's 2008 win. If only one-third of the states that no longer approve of Trump vote for his opponent, his opponent wins by the very thin margin that George W. Bush won by in 2000. And obviously if his drop in approval rating doesn't change a single electoral vote, he wins again by a narrow margin. That last scenario is possible but seems wildly improbable.

And of course one thing that makes this even worse for Trump is that every year more of his supporters die. In 2016, 52% of those over 65 voted for him while only 36% of those 18 to 29 did. Every year, about 2.8 million people die and about that many become old enough to vote. Every year, Trump loses about 500,000 voters, net, as younger voters less likely to vote for him replace older voters. He lost the popular vote by 3 million in 2016. Since then, the conveyor belt of aging has meant a net loss of roughly 2 million more voters.

A cautious man would predict a narrow victory for whichever Democrat runs against Trump. These numbers don't make me feel that cautious.

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[1] % of the people in the state who approve of him minus the % who disapprove
[2] Hawaii, where it dropped from a negative 13 t a negative 22
[3] New Mexico, where his net positive of 17 points dropped to a negative of 16
[4] The states that have dropped from a net positive to a net zero approval rating represent another 26 electoral votes. In June, Georgia and Missouri would have to flip a coin to decide whether they approved or disapproved of him.

Your Blogger's Forecast Record for the Last 2 Years - 2016 and 2017

Some years I make forecasts for the coming year. This is a blog so there is nothing standard about what metrics I forecast but here is a recap for the last two years.

2016

I forecast that median household income would finally enjoy a strong rise and forecast it would hit $55, maybe $57k. It hit $57.7k.

I thought residential construction would rise between 10 to 15%; the monthly year over year rise varied from 8 to 13%.

I forecast a rise in personal consumption of 5%. It hit 5%.

I was bullish on job creation, predicting another 12 straight months of uninterrupted job gains that would total between 2 to 3 million. We got 12 moths of uninterrupted job gains and 2.2 million new jobs.

I forecast a rise in the rate at which wages would go up; they did rise more rapidly in 2016 than they did in 2015. 

Finally, I forecast an S&P 500 rise of 10% to 20%. The market rose 9.8%.

2017

Last year, I forecast a smaller number of statistics but predicted a very strong economy. (Prediction is here, A Stimulus, a Boom and White Men Dancing: an economic forecast to the end of the decade )

The forecast starts with:
"First of all, the economy is primed for take-off."

And then,

"The next four years will be great and it's perfectly plausible that unemployment will drop below 4% within two to three years. We might even see the uninterrupted run of positive job creation run out another four years, as absurd as that sounds."

Then, it adjusts for the just elected Trump.

"Short term, Trump changes this for the positive ... bump GDP growth .... driving stock prices up."

I tweeted out just two statistics:

Job creation of 2 million and unemployment just over 4%.

The actual numbers? With a month left we're 84,000 jobs short of 2 million and the unemployment rate is 4.1%. Also, the stock market is up 18.8% for the year with weeks to go.

Next post will be my forecast for 2018.

Will Hillary's Campaign Strategy Make the Country More Polarized?

Today's NY Times has an article about Hillary Clinton's probable strategy, written by Jonathon Martin and Maggie Haberman. Bill Clinton went after (and won) states like Kentucky whereas Barack Obama focused on fewer states with an agenda that had less broad-based appeal. It seems that Hillary will be more like Obama in this regards, focusing on rallying more liberal voters rather than appealing to more moderate swing voters. The fear is that Democrats in the neglected states will be less likely to win local elections and even the ones who do win a place in Congress are going to be less able to relate to the folks across the aisle. Which is to say, it could cause more gridlock, not less.

The quote that summarizes the thinking behind Hillary Clinton's strategy is here:

“The highest-premium voter in ’92 was a voter who would vote for one party some and for another party some,” said James Carville, Mr. Clinton’s chief strategist in 1992. “Now the highest-premium voter is somebody with a high probability to vote for you and low probability to turn out. That’s the golden list. And that’s a humongous change in basic strategic doctrine.”

The real question is whether this is a capitulation to the reality of a more polarized electorate or if it is just going to exacerbate this polarization. In either case, it seems like a reminder that Hillary is more pragmatic than idealistic, less about changing voters's minds than winning office.