If the election were held today Trump would win... handily."
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. 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 Presidential Election Model correctly predicted Trumps 2016 win when most public opinion polls did not.
Luskins current model which looks at GDP growth gas prices inflation disposable income tax burden and payrolls has Trump winning by a blowout margin of 294 electoral votes.
I just dont see how the blue wall could resist all that" Luskin says.
And President Donald Trump recently seized on a new CNN Poll released early last week showing that more than 7-in-10 Americans or 71 to be precise view the U.S. economy as Very Good" or Somewhat Good."
Those numbers are higher than any figures CNN has measured during any point since a February 2001 CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll found that 80 of Americans thought the economy was as robust as it is today.
And as the Democrat Partys list of potential 2020 nominees grows with virtually all the candidates espousing strains of Democratic-Socialism and stronger government regulation the poll finds little public appetite for bigger government or deeper regulation overall.
Given those numbers and the political lurch to the left by the Democrat Party some political prognosticators believe that if the election were held today President Donald Trump would likely ride to a 2nd Term in a huge landslide.
And its based upon multiple economic models with a strong track record of picking presidential winners and losses.
Credit a strong-to-booming U.S. economy featuring low unemployment and more job openings than there are people to fill them rising wages & payrolls and low gas prices along with the historic advantage held by incumbent presidents.
Models maintained by economists and market strategists like Luskin tend to ignore election polls and personal characteristics of candidates and instead begin with historical trends and then build in key economic data to predict voting behavior and election outcomes including growth rates of the economy wages & payrolls unemployment inflation and gas prices.
Yale economist Ray Fair who pioneered this kind of modeling and who predicted a Trump win in 2016 also shows Trump winning by a fair margin in 2020.
Even if you have a decent stable but not great economy and thats more or less the consensus for between now and the 2020 Election that predicts a Trump victory in 2020 and not by just a trivial margin" Fair said.
He predicts that Trump would win 54 of the popular vote to just 46 for the Democrats.
And President Trump might also have a major ally in his quest to make sure the economic numbers dont go south: the Federal Reserve Bank which recently stopped its interest rate hikes said last Wednesday that it foresees no more rate hikes in 2019.
Mark Zandi chief economist at Moodys Analytics and a regular Trump critic has been road-testing a dozen different economic models for the 2020 race and at this point Trump wins in all 12 and quite comfortably in most of them. The Moodys models look at economic trends at the state level.
If the election were held today Trump would win and pretty handily" Zandi said.
In three or four of them it would be pretty close. Hes got low gas prices low unemployment a strong jobs market and a lot of other political variables at his back. The only exception is his popularity which matters a lot" said Zandi.
Prominent Democrats know that President Trump will be a formidable opponent in 2020 but all Democrats have to do is flip 100000 or so votes in three states (PA MI & WI) to win and thats a very doable thing.
However as president Trump has already upended many of the rules of presidential politics and his party performed better in the 2018 Mid-Term Elections than historical trends predicted even gaining 2 seats in the U.S. Senate.
And with the CNN poll showing that 71 Americans believe the U.S. economy Is Very Good" or Somewhat Good" Trump looks to be surprisingly good if the old James Carville maxim coined in 1992 holds true in 2020 Its The Economy Stupid!"
