Another projection piece on next years Presidential election that points to trouble for Donald Trump’s campaign for a second term…
This one based on Trump’s popularity a year out using Obama’s numbers going into his second term….
It points to a tough climb for a Trump second term…
We can get a much stronger prediction by controlling for Obama’s vote share in 2008. Using both that and the approval ratings to predict Obama’s reelection vote share yields an r-squared of .96, with both factors highly statistically significant.
Next, I used the regression formula resulting from that* to predict Trump’s vote share in 2020, using his vote share in 2016 and his 2019 approval ratings. I then took those forecasts and plugged them into the map below. The “lean-D” states are those where Trump is predicted to get between 40 and 48 percent of the vote, and the “lean-R” states are those where he’s predicted to get between 52 and 60 percent. The tossups are between 48 and 52 percent.
This is notably a much more competitive map than the one Greg posted. It leans Democratic — Trump would need to hold pretty much all the tossups in order to remain in office — but neither side has a lock on this one.
Again, as Greg noted, these are just projections based on very early data, and quite a bit (impeachment, recession, etc.) can happen between now and November 2020. It’s also quite possible that Trump’s approval ratings won’t predict his vote share in the same way that Obama’s predicted his. But at least from this look, while Trump’s task is a difficult one, it is far from insurmountable….