The 2020 election is going to be upon us towards the end of the year, and according to the stats that we have seen from the 2016 election to now, Donald Trump will most likely be a two term president.
History scholar George Santayana once said,“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” In the 2016 election a silent minority of the United States voted into office the 45th president, Donald J. Trump.
To the dismay of many Democrats, Trump had won with all the odds stacked up against him. According to Real Clear Politics almost every single major poll had Hillary Clinton winning in 2016; even the conservative Fox News poll had Ms. Clinton winning by 4 Electoral votes the day before the 2016 election.
But as we now know Mr. Trump won, largely because of a historically low voter turn out of registered Democrats in key swing states across the country.
Due to many of the same circumstances surrounding the 2020 election, this editorial board believes that Mr. Trump will win again in 2020.
Mr.Trump has never been a president that appealed to the majority of people. Trump’s approval rating has never been higher than 45.5 percent, according to the nonpartisan polling website FiveThirtyEight.
But that approval rating might not be telling the full story of how current and future voters feel on the prospect of Trump in 2020.
In the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, Mr. Trump’s favorability ratings were sitting at around 42 percent, according to the polling website RealClearPolitics. So if we use this evidence as a starting point to “Trump’s Checklist” of repeating history, he has checked the box of the approval rating.
When the election cycle began two years ago, many more Democrats presented so many different scenarios. As 2020 arrived, the crowded field that had once numbered over twenty had winnowed down to near ten. Shortly after Super Tuesday, that number fell to three. With so many candidates involved in the process, the party seemed broadened, which seemed to increase the chances a Democrat winning the election.
Yet many different scenarios had most “new-age” Democrats losing to the president. According to an “A+’ poll of Siena College/New York Times Upshot, only two democratic candidates had a realistic chance, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.
But the Democrats appeared fractured in the campaign. The debates evolved into shoating matches over divisive topics like climate change, immigration and civil rights.
“I think Trump will win because of the lack of unity in the Democratic Party,” said senior Lauren Jarman
Current numbers suggest that Democrats are splitting themselves up, making supporters pick sides and making Trump’s win inevitable in 2020.
“After watching the Democraticn Debate, all I saw was the candidates attacking andbeing nasty towards each other,” said senior Elly Mclalwain. “If feels as though this is 2016 again, when they were attacking Micheal Bloomberg for the NDA’s he used for some of his employees, it felt exactly like 2016 when Hillary was attacking Bernie”.
Now with the Democrats paving the way for Joe Biden to be their presumptive nominee, the party has tried to unify behind him, but that doesn’t mean that the voters have.
Though almost every Democratic candidate that has dropped out has supported Biden, there is a big chunk of Democrats that haven’t embraced him: Bernie supporters. According to the award winning survey research company, the Morning Consultant, only 44 percent of Bernie supporters have a favorable view of Biden. This may reflect that 2 out of 3 Sanders supporters are under the age of 45, and the issues that the younger generation feel strongly about (racism, feminism, and student deb) are weak points in the Biden campaign. Biden’s lackluster track record on these issues may cause the youngest of the Democrats to not vote for him.
Now the “check” for the Democrats to split themselves up is checked.
Not only will the Democrats being divided help Mr. Trump win in 2020, but also the lack of a Republican challenger is a factor. From the beginning of Trump’s presidency, many Republicans, past and present, such as former president George W. Bush, the late Senator John McCain, and Mitt Romney. have called out President Trump, The latter of those actually voted for Trump to be removed from office in the impeachment trial that was held this year. As a result, Mr. Romney was unceremoniously humiliated by House and Senate Republicans.
Romney’s running mate in 2016, former GOP Speaker Paul Ryan, said that he “disagreed” with what the Senator did.
Mr. Trump said, “We don’t want him anymore”, to describe Romney’s stance with the President.
With this shot taken at the last Republican challenger he simultaneously took down the last of the opposition in the party.
So the “check” for the Republican nomination was checked off for Trump.
Now we will look at the stats one last time that confirm the highly likelihood of Trump winning in 2020.
We will first look the approval rating for President Donald Trump leading up to the election and during his presidency. Since an approval rating isn’t a thing before the election because there is nothing to approve so we will be looking at RealClearPolitics favorability rankings. Trump’s favorability ranking was sitting at about 37.5 throughout the final months leading up to the election. Never deviating more than three percentage points each way. And with that low of a favorability ranking he was able to still win the presidency.
After he won the Presidency, his approval rating skyrocketed to over forty-five percent. But what people haven’t looked at is how stagnant his approval rating has been for the past year.
Mr. Trump’s approval rating hasn’t been below fourth-one percent or above fourth-three point three percent for the last year and a half.
Even with the impeachment scandal his approval rating hasn’t moved all that much only moving less than one point five percent higher.
“I feel as though Trump supporters have mostly stayed Trump supporters and Trump haters have mostly stayed Trump haters,” said senior Max Fisher. “I haven’t seen many people change their opinions one way or the other.”
The Covid-19 epidemic has been starting to affect the lives of voters in a way that has never happened before. A global pandemic that is causing most voters to stay at home and routinely seeing how the president is immediately responding to the global pandemic. This is a make it or break it issue for Mr. Trump, and it is too early to say whether people like or dislike how he’s been responding. Preliminary reports say the public isn’t happy with his response but it is still too early to tell.
So with all the facts, opinions and statistics shown, The Miter, believes Donald Trump is going to be a two-term president.