Because Donald Trump won the 2016 election when everyone expected him to lose, there is a tendency at this moment in time to avoid any sort of analysis of what his current dismal political position means for his chances of winning a second term.
This sentiment is, in a word, dumb.
Why? Because, for a variety of reasons — Trump is the incumbent, Joe Biden isn’t nearly as polarizing a figure as Hillary Clinton, the coronavirus, George Floyd — the 2020 election isn’t simply a replay of the 2016 election.
Trump is today in a far deeper hole in terms of his chances of winning than he was at any point in the 2016 election.
As Inside Elections editor Nathan Gonzales wrote recently:
“After Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016, there’s a temptation to avoid making political projections. But one election result shouldn’t cause us to ignore the data. And right now the preponderance of data points to a great election for Democrats.”
One stat — flagged by 538’s Nathaniel Rakich — makes that point starkly. And it’s this:
At this point in the 2016 race. Clinton had a 1.1-point lead over Trump in the national polling average. Right now, Biden has a 9.1-point average lead over Trump in national polls.
Sidebar: Biden’s lead is larger than all but four past races at this point: Bill Clinton in 1996 (15.2-point average lead) and 1992 (13.7) and Ronald Reagan in 1984 (12.1) and 1980 (11.3).
The truth of the 2016 election that those numbers make clear is that it never looked like a total blowout for Clinton. Yes, most observers assumed that she would win — myself included — because she had enough leads in enough swing states. But those leads were never huge.
That is simply not the case in 2020 — at least right now. Not only does Biden have a far wider lead over Trump than Clinton did in the national polling average, but he is also ahead by a statistically significant margin in the vast majority of traditional swing states. And polling suggests that Biden is also running close to Trump in longtime Republican strongholds like Texas, Arizona and Georgia.
None of this means that Biden is guaranteed to win! There are still 110 days before the election. Outside events could drastically change the way in which things look right now. Biden could make a costly gaffe. Trump could find a message. Anything is possible!
But even if Trump does wind up winning, it still doesn’t prove that 2020 is just like 2016. It’s not! Simply because Trump beat the odds in that race doesn’t tell us much of anything about whether he can again.
The Point: Trump is in the worst shape of his admittedly brief political career. What he did in 2016 doesn’t change that fact.
