http://cnu.edu/wasoncenter/2019/07/01-2020-election-forecast/
Here is an interesting read. Rachel Bitecofer was one of the few analysts who correctly called 2018. She analyzes races based on partisanship.
...
Yet, the media (and the voting public) has turned Trump’s 2016 win into a mythic legend of invincibility. The complacent electorate of 2016, who were convinced Trump would never be president, has been replaced with the terrified electorate of 2020, who are convinced he’s the Terminator and can’t be stopped. Under my model, that distinction is not only important, it is everything.
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Trump’s second problem is that along with a turnout surge of Democrats that in many states like Virginia is simply larger than the turnout surges of Republicans because of demographics, he is deeply unpopular among Independents because of all the abnormal, norm-breaking and according to the Mueller Report, even illegal things, he does as president. This has left him with an abysmal approval rating of just 34.8% in 2019 among Independents, who largely broke against Republicans in the 2018 midterms as my theory predicted.
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Final prediction for electoral college in 2020
Democrat: 278 votes Republican: 197 votes
Trump is losing women and Independents. And is energizing them to turn out and not make the mistakes of 2016.
Pretty much. But he's also losing "strong approvers" among Republicans. Here's the latest
YouGov poll:
And here they break it down even further:
That bottom section in particular is revealing. 53% of Republicans approve of "most" things Trump has done, but disapprove of a "few" things. I know that seems a little tame, but consider the level of entrenched support that Trump
used to get among Republicans. If 53% are willing to finally concede--in a poll--that some of the things he's done aren't all that kosher with them, then that's actually a very large chink in the armor.
Combine that with only 62% of Republicans "strongly approving" of his job overall and we're looking at a huge potential swing and/or
just sit this one out contingent.
And look at the white/male (aged 30-44)/$50-100K contingent, Trump's strongest support demographic. Only 30% across that board "strongly approve." For
any incumbent, to have that low of an approval rating among your staunchest supporters is catastrophic to say the least. And among white/male (aged 18-29)/under $50K it's even worse, at something on the order of only 12% of that combined group strongly approving.
Among Indies (in general), only 19% "strongly" approve.
And, again, the reason to focus first on the "strongly approve" category is that they represent the percentage that a candidate can more-or-less safely count on in order to focus their attention on the others who aren't so strong, because those are the wild(er) cards; the fencesitters/potential swing/potential
just won't bothers.
So he's got a huge problem to surmount--before he can even get to dealing with the overwhelming numbers of Democrats--particularly since Indies are the largest voting block and Republicans, in general, only make up about 23% of the electorate to begin with. So 62% total "strongly support" is 62% of 23%, or 14% of the total electorate that he can count on.
Even if you include the "somewhat approve" as a solid (and you can't), it's only at 88% approve. Which, again, is 88% of 23%, or 20% up against 35% Dems and 38% Indies total electorate.
So even if every single Republican in America who approves (somewhat or strongly) of Trump actually got off their asses and voted--and every single Independent who approves of Trump (somewhat or strongly) got off
their asses and voted--he's
still outnumbered by Dems and left-leaning Indies on the order of 20-25%.
Which in turn means he needs to either (or, in combination) suppress at least 25% of both Dems and Indies, or otherwise convince 25% to swing to him. There are only 12% among Indies who are "not sure" and only 1% among Dems.
So
at the very least he'd need to convince that 13% to vote
for him and suppress 12% Dems/Indies; i.e., to convince them to just not bother to vote the way the Russians did in 2016. They only managed to suppress about 2%-4% (if that) and that almost entirely among blacks.
They haven't stopped running their warfare, of course, but to make up an additional 10% suppression through the same tactics would be a nearly impossible feat, but even more improbable is Trump being able to convince the other 13% Dems/Indies to vote
for him, while Russia successfully suppresses the other 10%.
There are other suppression tactics that will be incorporated--as they always are, because Republicans can only win by cheating--but they wouldn't come anywhere near 10%, let alone the full 25% necessary.
And that's just to even the playing field; to get parity of percentages, not necessarily anything to do with
winning. That's just to get Trump's numbers up to the level where he can actually compete.