On Thursday, Politico ran a story detailing how several economic models with a history of accuracy predict a win for Trump in 2020:
“[I[f the election were held today, he’d likely ride to a second term in a huge landslide, according to multiple economic models with strong track records of picking presidential winners and losses.
“Credit a strong U.S. economy featuring low unemployment, rising wages and low gas prices — along with the historic advantage held by incumbent presidents.”
The story goes on to reiterate the commonsense line of thought that if the economy suffers an upset in the next 20 months before November 2020, that advantage may slip. But what if things stay mostly the same, economy-wise, for the country?
“‘Even if you have a mediocre but not great economy—and that’s more or less consensus for between now and the election—that has a Trump victory and by a not-trivial margin,’ winning 54 percent of the popular vote to 46 for the Democrat, [Yale economist Ray Fair] said. Fair’s model also predicted a Trump win in 2016 though it missed on Trump’s share of the popular vote.”
Nevertheless, most other kinds of pollsters missed Trump’s 2016 defeat of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and despite the economic advantage Trump has so far in his term, any number of factors (say, completely upending the normal electoral process?!) could come into play.
