It’s the economy, stupid.
According to Politico, President Donald Trump may already have 2020 in the bag thanks to his progress on strengthening the American economy.
Politico spoke to economic experts who seemed to agree that thanks to Trump’s success when it comes to improving America’s financial situation, the Democrats are well on their way to being steamrolled:
“The economy is just so damn strong right now and by all historic precedent the incumbent should run away with it,” said Donald Luskin, chief investment officer of TrendMacrolytics, a research firm whose model correctly predicted Trump’s 2016 win when most opinion polls did not. “I just don’t see how the blue wall could resist all that.”
One Yale economist agrees:
Yale economist Ray Fair, who pioneered this kind of modeling, also shows Trump winning by a fair margin in 2020 based on the economy and the advantage of incumbency.
“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, he said. Fair’s model also predicted a Trump win in 2016 though it missed on Trump’s share of the popular vote.
Even economists who don’t like Trump are reading the 2020 tea leaves in their economic reports and seeing Trump getting an easy win:
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and a regular Trump critic, has been road-testing a dozen different economic models for the 2020 race. At this point, Trump wins in all 12 — and quite comfortably in most of them. The Moody’s models look at economic trends at the state level.
“If the election were held today, Trump would win according to the models and pretty handily,” Zandi said. “In three or four of them it would be pretty close. He’s got low gas prices, low unemployment and a lot of other political variables at his back. The only exception is his popularity, which matters a lot. If that falls off a cliff it would make a big difference.” The Moody’s models look at economic trends at the state level and incorporate some political variables including a president’s approval rating.
To Zandi’s point, all economists agree that while predictions say Trump could win handily thanks to his booming economy, a sudden drop before next fall could signal his doom, but even then, the drop would have to be sharp.
“It would have to slow a lot to still be not pretty good,” Luskin said.
At this point, Trump is looking very strong going into 2020, especially with a more-or-less united Republican party behind him and a Democratic party that continuously signals that it’s on the verge of a civil war between the moderates and the radicals.
Much can change between now and election time, but as it stands, it all looks like it’s coming up Trump.
Via RedState
