President Trump Has Announced his Reelection Campaign. Will He Win?
Last night (June 19th, 2019), President Trump announced that he will seek reelection in 2020. Speaking before a packed crowd in Orlando, Florida, the speech was basically a greatest-hits album from his 2016 run: Hillary Clinton, Immigration, Mainstream Media is Unfair — although it did feature a remix (“Keep America Great Again”) and a new bonus track (“The Russia Investigation was a Witch Hunt”). The event was a (literally, at times) roaring success for the President, helping him rake in nearly 25 million dollars for his campaign.
The fact that President Trump is running for a second term isn’t exactly surprising. Shoot, he’s basically never stopped running for office. He’s kept up a frenetic pace of rallies appearances: Over 60 of them since being sworn in, with his first one coming less than a month after taking the oath of office. In fact, his constant campaigning seems to be the only thing that political scientists and presidential historians think that he’s doing exceptionally well, contrary to the president’s constant bombastic, self-congratulatory bravado.
The obvious question now (hence why it’s in the title) is whether or not the President will repeat his improbable victory? Will he win in 2020?
In short: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lots of people are prognosticating about the President’s chances. And since this is the internet, plenty of people are commenting derisively at other people’s prognostications, which will get mangled into proving some unrelated point, said point will be haphazardly paraphrased by some talking head, it’ll then get echoed by an army of bots, and then all that’s left is to wait for the final stage of this terrible apotheosis where it’s featured in an ad-ridden listicle. But if you wade through the snark, sarcasm, and unearned confidence, you’ll find a dedicated contingent of political scientists and public opinion experts broadcasting an unfulfilling truth: The honest answer is that we simply don’t know.
“The relationship between public opinion this far out and electoral success is murky at best.”
There’s a lot going either way here; the good and bad basically cancel each other out. The economy is doing well. The President can’t stop creating controversies for himself. Americans are generally optimistic about the future of the country. The President’s own internal polls have him losing to every major possible Democratic challenger in vital swing states. More people are excited about the election at this incredibly early point in the campaign compared to only few months out in 2008, 2012, 2016. High turnout tends to favor Democrats.
The elephant in the room here (pun intended) is the President’s public approval. No President has been this consistent in their (dis)approval numbers since the advent of modern polling. Unfortunately for the President, no President has been this consistently low either. If that sounds bad, it gets worse: No President during that time was this unpopular at this stage of their tenure. Period. That may sound familiar, and it should. It’s been said a lot about the President before. But it isn’t exactly great that one can say “no one’s been worse” at just about any point and be correct.
However, the historical success rate of Presidents winning reelection is pretty good. Since Harry Truman, there have been 10 presidents who earnestly sought reelection. (The word “earnestly” is doing the heavy lifting of allowing me to ignore the fuzzy case of Lyndon Johnson in 1968). Of those 10, 7 successfully clinched reelection.
On the other hand, no President has ever managed to win reelection with a lower net approval rating of -2 at this point in office, which was Ronald Reagan’s. President Trump’s net approval rating is substantially below that at -15.
On the other other hand, the relationship between public opinion this far out and electoral success is murky at best. Although no president with a rating this low managed to reclaim the office, Presidents Ford and H. W. Bush lost with net ratings of +18 and +52, respectively. One could make the claim that the elections were both those men’s to lose (and that they did so in spectacular fashion), but it doesn’t make the link between net approval and eventual success any less tenuous. Realistically, the President’s low approval will be a substantial burden to his efforts — especially because it comes packaged with a lot of energetic, angry disapproval from most Democrats and “Independents” — but they won’t guarantee any particular outcome.
Perhaps the better question than will the President win in 2020 is can the President win in 2020? At least that one we can give an answer to: It’s absolutely possible, yes. Granted he will have to manage to make appeals to more than the 30ish percent of the public that are unshakably in his corner, but there is no physical law of the universe or society that says it can’t be done. If I were advising any one of the 20 million people running on the Democratic ticket right now, I’d tell them that there’s nothing stopping them from thinking the election’s in the bag but they do so at their own peril. (To be fair, none of the front-runners — Biden, Warren, Sanders, Harris, O’Rourke, Booker, or Buttigieg — appear to be doing so).
But while President Turmp can win he can lose in 2020 too. In fact, a sober assessment reveals that there just as many reasons for him to fail; losing would probably be far easier than winning right now. And while that fact isn’t definitive, it certainly isn’t great either.
Peter R. Licari is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Florida specializing in American Politics, Political Behavior, and Political Methodology. The opinions expressed are his own. He can also be found on YouTube and on Twitter(@PRLPoliSci). What little spare time remains is dedicated to long-distance running, video games with his ever-patient wife, Stephanie, walking his dog, Dude, and holding oddly productive one-sided conversations with his cat, Asia.
