The 2020 Election Conundrum

W ith the Mueller Report submitted to the Department of Justice, the cloud hanging over the Donald Trump administration has begun to lift. Whether or not there is any political fallout for the president remains to be seen, but at the very least the special prosecutor’s investigation is not going to result in Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. The decision on whether he stays or goes will be up to voters in November 2020.

It is far too early to know how the next presidential election will play out, but we can at least make some introductory points to give us a sense of the situation.

Democrats are strongly convinced that Trump is vulnerable, as is evidenced by the large number of major candidates in the field. There are roughly a dozen Democrats, give or take, who have a “presidential” profile — fitting the résumé typically held by a president-elect. Compare the large number of Democrats with the relative drought among Republicans in 2012. In that election, conservatives like myself tried to get other candidates — such as Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Mitch Daniels — into the race, but to no avail. That was an indication that Republicans believed Barack Obama was the favorite.

Bear in mind that one is much less likely to win the presidency after having already once pursued it and lost. So, ambitious Democrats who wish to be president are placing a bet that this is the year to run.

This bet is justified, but it is far from a guarantee. The 2020 presidential election is going to feature two, very strong historical trends moving in opposite directions for the first time in modern history. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Perhaps we are about to find out.

The first trend heavily favors Trump. Since 1896, there has only been one time when an incumbent party lost its first effort at reelection. That was in 1980. Every other time, the incumbent party has won — in 1900, 1916, 1924, 1936, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2004, and 2012. The second successful effort at reelection is pretty rare. That happened only in 1904, 1928, 1940, and 1988. A third successful effort at reelection happened in 1908 and 1944. And a fourth successful reelection effort in a row has happened only once, in 1948. Jimmy Carter lost in 1980 in large measure because his party was fractured ideologically, a recession set in, and a foreign-policy crisis occurred — simultaneously. It was a perfect political storm that drove the 39th president from office.

I’d wager that there are two major reasons for this, one psychological and one economic. Psychologically, voters do not like to admit that they made mistakes, so they enter into the campaign with a very strong bias toward voting for the person they voted for already. Economically, turnover in presidential elections tends to track the business cycle. Parties often lose reelection bids because the economy has fallen south. This was a contributing factor in incumbent-party loses in 1932, 1960, 1976, 1992, and 2008. When the business cycle turned around (as it inevitably does), the other party reaps the reward, helping it win an easy reelection four years later, as happened in 1936, 1964, 1996, and 2012. It is pretty rare for a recession to drive one party out of office, and then another recession to drive the other party out four years later. Only Carter experienced that misfortune.

This trend generally favors Trump, although not overwhelmingly. For starters, he is a minority president, having won a smaller share of the vote than Hillary Clinton did; and, crucially, he won by a plurality margin in the key swing states. If the non-Trump vote consolidates around a single candidate, he would lose, even if he won back all the voters he carried in 2016. The economy is probably the best asset he has right now. It is still growing, albeit not as fast as it did in 2018. If that persists, he will be able to claim political credit.

The second trend disfavors Trump. Since modern public-opinion polling began in the 1940s, every American president has enjoyed the support of a majority of Americans for at least a moderate stretch of time — except Trump. When he was inaugurated in January 2017, his initial job-approval rating was split at 44 percent approve, 44 percent disapprove, according to the RealClearPolitics average of the major polls. It quickly fell into net negative territory, where it has remained ever since.

This is probably due in part to the political polarization of the 21st century. Strong Democrats were never going to approve of Trump, at least not for long. However, strong Democrats alone do not make up half the electorate. The critical groups for either side are unaffiliated independents and soft partisans. Trump has consistently struggled to win these people over.

This is unprecedented. Even presidents who end up being enormously unpopular — Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush —enjoyed lengthy periods of popularity. Their tenures fell into disrepute because events got the better of them. Trump, on the other hand, has received low marks from the start, suggesting that Americans were wary of him at first and have never reconciled themselves to his administration.

So, here we have the essential conundrum of 2020. Never has a party lost its first bid for reelection when the economy was strong. But never has a party run a president who was persistently unpopular. Which way is this going to resolve itself? Who knows, but ambitious Democrats are betting that it will favor their side.