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When the international banking and investment firm Goldman Sachs quizzed 160 of its clients attending its Global Strategy Conference in London last week, it learned that 139 of them think Donald Trump will win reelection in November. The word “triumph” appeared in its research note to its clients.
Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, thinks so too. While Goldman’s clients cannot in any way be confused with the average American citizen and voter, Hanson thinks those citizens and voters will reelect Trump. History is on Trump’s side, says Hanson. In the 1996 presidential election Bill Clinton crushed Bob Dole in both the popular vote and in the Electoral College, not because Clinton was so popular (his polls were in the 40s) but because Dole was “uninspiring” to voters, according to Hanson.
In the 2012 election, Republicans repeated the mistake, nominating Mitt Romney to face Barack Obama who was running for reelection. Romney, according to Hanson, had “little appeal to Republican’s conservative base” and Obama won reelection easily.
Fast forward to 2020: Trump’s popularity is in the 40s, but he easily rallies his base of supporters with his Twitter account and his bluster on the hustings.
Election oddsmakers continue to show Trump leading against any of the Democrat candidates, with his lead widening despite (or perhaps because of) his impeachment by the House of Representatives. Oddschecker.com showed Trump pulling away from Joe Biden if Biden were crowned the winner by the Democrat Party. If he isn’t, none of the others in the running (Sanders, Bloomberg, Warren, etc.) come anywhere close to challenging Trump in November.
Lee Price, head of public relations for the bookmaking company Paddy Power, was clear. On Making Money with Charles Payne at Fox Business last week he said: “This time, [Trump is] odds on … more likely than not to reelected.”
Alex Donohue, analyst at US-Bookies.com, calls for Trump to win in November as well: “Despite all the fanfare about the president’s impeachment, the reality is that this is highly unlikely to materialize into a conviction. The betting markets now suggest the upshot of this entire process is that Trump is more likely to win [in] 2020.” His organization currently gives the president a 47.6 percent chance of winning in November compared to 40 percent at the beginning of December.
At Bookies.com Trump’s advantage continues to widen over any of his Democrat opponents as well. And Wall Street Journal writer Theo Francis thinks the futures market also is calling for a Trump win in November. His current predictions are that Bernie Sanders will win Iowa but Joe Biden will win the Democrat Party’s nomination. And that Trump will beat Biden by losing the popular vote (again) but winning big in the Electoral College (again).
At RealClearPolitics.com, each of the general election polls taken in early January show Trump and any of his Democrat rivals within low single digits of each other, well within each poll’s margin of error.
The reality is that, while the president appears to have all the momentum in January, November is still nine months away — a lifetime in politics. In 2016, he only beat the highly unpopular Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College by winning three key swing states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And those were won by less than one percent.
On the other hand, Trump’s momentum is backed by a strong and improving economy that has been rewarding lower-income workers more than higher-paid managers and executives (removing one of the Democrat’s key talking points). At this point in his presidency, the president has intervened militarily less than Barack Obama. And under his administration, he has managed to roll back the Islamic State and kill one of its leader.
Additionally his impeachment increasingly appears to be operating to Trump’s advantage just as Clinton’s did in the 1998 and 2000 elections. Following his impeachment Clinton’s polls improved, and Republicans lost seats in Congress in both of those elections.
And the cast of Democrats vying to take on Trump is weak, according to Philip Klein, writing in the Washington Examiner: the “Democrat candidates don’t seem ready to take on Trump.” And far-left Obama advisor Van Jones agrees. Referring to the latest debate, he said, “I want to say that tonight, for me, was most dispiriting. Democrats have to do better than what we say tonight. There was nothing I saw tonight that would be able to take Donald Trump out.”
The key, perhaps, is voter enthusiasm. “Trump enjoys a passionate following,” wrote Klein, “and the GOP is more unified around him than when he won the first time around.”
The election appears Trump’s to win. With history, the economy, the oddsmakers, Goldman Sachs’ clients, and a weak Democrat cast of candidates all working on his side, the president is on track for another four years.
Photo: liveslow / iStock / Getty Images Plus
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
