Could the 2020 Presidential Election Really be this Simple?

The memories from the last presidential election are still fresh in my mind.  Like most every other American, I watched the election returns with the certitude that Hillary Clinton would be our next President.  As we all know, things did not quite work out that way.  As the night wore on and the stark realization begin to sink in that Donald Trump would be our next President, the talking heads on television media exhibited raw emotions ranging from sheer jubilation to absolute paralysis.  That election has been analyzed over and over by far greater minds than mine; I shall not repeat the exercise.  I am not sure that anyone, regardless of their credentials, has a firm understanding of exactly how the perfect political storm came to blow across America on that fateful day.  But I will venture a salient observation about the next fateful day that will arrive in November of 2020.

As has been observed by many of the professional writers and journalists who are paid to do such things, we are a nation bitterly divided down party lines.  One can quibble about exactly what the respective percentages are; but there is little debate that there is a hard core of Republican support that hovers around the 35 percent figure and a similar solid center to Democratic support in the same range.  It may very well be the case that these percentages are even larger than 35 percent; perhaps even as high as 40-45 percent.   Wherever the correct figure lies, it is likely accurate to state that very little movement has occurred on either political side since November 8 of 2016.  It is difficult to dispute that if a person supported Trump in the 2016 election, they likely continue to support him today.  Estimating the Democratic center is a bit more challenging due to the fact that their 2020 Presidential nominee has yet to be determined.  However, it is reasonable to consider how many of the 2016 Hillary Clinton voters will vote against Trump regardless of who the Democratic nominee turns out to be.  In 2016, that total was comprised of both Hillary Clinton enthusiasts and anti-Trump individuals.  I fully expect that those Hillary enthusiasts have quite smoothly transitioned into the anti-Trump camp.  Therefore, let us consider that we begin our 2020 Presidential Election prognostication with a baseline of the vote totals from 2016.

No two elections are the same.  The only thing that the 2020 Presidential Election will have in common with the 2016 version is the fact that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee.  But if there is any validity to the suppositions from the previous paragraphs, then predicting the 2020 Presidential victor might be as simple as predicting the outcomes of the Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania votes.  I will generously borrow some data from John McCormack’s Weekly Standard article of 11/10/16 linked here: https://www.weeklystandard.com/john-mccormack/the-election-came-down-to-77-744-votes-in-pennsylvania-wisconsin-and-michigan-updated .  In the 2012 Presidential Election, Obama carried Michigan by 9.5 points, Wisconsin by 6.7 points and Pennsylvania by 5.2 points.  In the 2016 Presidential Election, Trump carried Michigan by 0.2 points (10,704 votes), Wisconsin by 0.7 points (22,748 votes) and Pennsylvania by 0.7 points (44.292 votes).  Had Hillary Clinton carried these three states, she would have been elected President by an electoral count of 278 to 260.  These numbers should give any sober Republican pause.  It drives home the point that Hillary Clinton was one of the weakest presidential candidates in history.  No matter who the Democrats put up to oppose Trump in 2020; they will likely not be as flawed as Hillary Clinton.  The 2016 Presidential Election was decided by a margin of about 77,000 votes out of a total vote count of 136 million. 

It is quite possible that the aforementioned handful of voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will largely determine our next President.  The big question is how do these people view President Trump in the context of today’s political landscape?  If the Clinton votes go to the Democrat and Trump retains his 2016 votes…and…if the turnout numbers are similar…then we are likely to see a second term for Donald Trump.  On the other hand, if the hard core on the right stays Trump and the hard core on the left stays Democratic (quite likely); can we be so certain that this small group of voters who keep their rationales to themselves and shun the pollsters behave the same way they did in 2016? 

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The idealistic warfare that will be Presidential Election 2020 is going to be epic; many informed people feel it will be a clearly defined choice between liberal policy and conservative policy.  It is entirely possible that this ideological choice will overshadow even the candidates themselves.  If the Party candidates continue to preach the political gospel they expect their base constituencies want to hear (stoking the fires, tossing the red meat, preaching to the choir), they are likely to hold the conflicting cores together.  But how will this rhetoric that is so far removed from the center sound to those few in the middle who might very well decide the 2020 winner and perhaps even the direction of our nation for generations to come?  The stakes for this election could not be higher and the energy and resources that will go into the campaigns will undoubtedly be unprecedented. 

When we compare 2016 to what may occur in 2020, it would be foolish not to expect that some blue states may turn red and some red may turn to blue.  But it is perhaps just as likely that the political tilts of 2016 have only been strengthened by our country’s hyper-partisan environment and the outcome of our next Presidential Election will be decided by those folks in the middle…those few souls in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania…who last decided in 2016 to break towards Trump.  They are now sitting in judgment on AOC and her squad, Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, open borders, Medicare for All, eternal investigations of the Presidency, idiotic tweets by the infant in the White House, the continued trade war with China, unsettled and eternal disputes with North Korea and Iran, and apparent chaos in the Trump Administration regarding personnel and policy. There is an abundance of good economic news and there are other positive developments in our nation.  There is also a wealth of ridiculous material from both Parties that is worthy of high scorn and disappointment.  This President does not know how to sit on a lead; he has an infuriating aversion to good fortune.  It is not an overstatement to surmise that the fate of the world’s greatest nation rests in the hands (or the ballots) of these few thousand voters.  What…are…they…thinking?