When I was in London last week for Boris Johnson’s landslide victory, many people asked me whether Trump would win again in 2020.
Since I was wrong about 2016, I told them I wasn’t the right person to ask.
That being said, Trump has some positive economic tailwinds.
For those of you who care about political outcomes, there’s a new CNN poll of battleground states.
It’s good news for Republicans, particularly if one assumes that there are some people who don’t want to admit that they will vote for Trump (which seems to have been true in 2016).
BATTLEGROUND STATE* VOTERS
Choice for PresidentDem. Trump
Biden 47% 47%
Warren 46% 48%
Sanders 45% 49%
Buttigieg 43% 48%Margin of error: +/-6.6% pts
* the 15 states decided by 8 points or less in 2016
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 20, 2019
Political betting markets also are pointing to a Trump victory.
Here’s a screenshot showing the 2019 odds of success for the various candidates. As you can see Trump’s numbers are trending upwards – including a positive bump after the House voted for impeachment!
Both polls and betting markets were wrong in 2016, so take all this data with a grain of salt.
For those who care about economic policy, I’ll simply regurgitate my usual comment that Trump is good on some issues (taxes and regulation) and bad on other issues (trade and spending).
I expect this pattern to continue if he’s reelected.
The big wild card is monetary policy.
As I said in the interview, I worry there’s a bubble caused by an easy-money approach. And bad things happen when bubbles pop.
P.S. I should have mentioned that the employment-population data is not as positive as the unemployment-rate data.
P.P.S. I mentioned macroeconomic political forecasts in the interview. I wrote about those predictions back in October.
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Image credit: Gage Skidmore | CC BY-SA 2.0.
