Three modelers are predicting President Trump will win reelection in 2020 based on a combination of economic data and incumbent advantages, according to a column in The New York Times.
Steven Rattner wrote that Ray Fair of Yale favors Trump to win based on a model that combines incumbency and gross domestic product growth rates.
The model predicted Barack Obama’s 2008 popular vote margin within a fraction of a percentage point and got within two-tenths of a point for his 2012 vote share, Rattner, who served as a counselor to the Treasury secretary during the Obama administration, added.
{mosads}The model correctly predicting an electoral victory for Trump in 2016, but overestimated his popular vote share by about 5.5 points, which Rattner attributed to Trump’s personal unfavorables.
“In other words, a more ‘normal’ Republican would likely have won the popular vote by a substantial margin (instead of losing it by three million votes),” Rattner wrote.
Trump’s status as the incumbent also puts the odds in his favor for 2020, according to the Obama-era official.
Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics’s chief economist, has also said Trump is poised to win based on an analysis of 12 models, while Donald Luskin of Trend Macrolytics made a similar prediction based on an Electoral College analysis, Rattner noted.
“So the question for 2020 may well be whether Mr. Trump can overcome the majority of voters’ poor perception of him and use a good economy and incumbency to win re-election,” he writes.