(01-07-2017, 06:14 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I suspect Trump will have strong unfavorable ratings throughout his presidency, yet stands a good chance of winning re-election anyway, if he runs.
Such would be in accord with 2016 too.
Adapted heavily from Nate Silver in 538.com.
1. Watch the approval ratings, as those involve performance of the duties of the President. Approval measures in essence how the People deem the President's stewardship of the economy and foreign policy and avoidance of scandals.
Favorability relates how people think of the President (or any other politician) as a person -- basically "do you like him? Favorability of Bill Clinton was very low while approval of his Presidency was very high. Except for the sexual stuff, Bill Clinton did fine. If Donald Trump gives America an economic miracle and gets good results on foreign policy, then people will not care so much about the personality that he showed in the campaign and as President-Elect. People might tolerate a politician even if they don't like him -- maybe he brings home the bacon and votes right.
We won't see approval ratings until Donald Trump is President for perhaps a month. Approval ratings will be the commodity to watch.
2. Approval ratings matter greatly. A good estimate is the share of the vote that he got -- about 46%. Typically, once a politician (and this applies for Governors and Senators) is legislating or administrating, his approval ratings fall about 7%. He is no longer campaigning, and he must disappoint some people who voted for him. The results that he gets as a politician will keep his approval rating at 7% below his percentage share of the vote if he does a middling job, but he can gain or lose. Should he choose to run for re-election, then he will campaign, and start building optimism about him among marginal voters.
The 'average' elected official gains about 7% from his approval rating to his vote share. That's the average for great numbers of politicians as campaigners against an 'average' challenger; some incumbents and challengers are better, and some are worse.
So let's say that Senator Snake has an approval rating of 41% going into a campaign season seeking re-election. To get a plurality of the vote he would need to be an unusually-strong campaigner against an ordinary challenger. As an ordinary incumbent against an ordinary challenger -- he loses 52-48. If he is an unusually effective campaigner or his opponent is unusually weak, then he has some chance of winning.
Most Presidents were Governors or Senators before being elected President. The President is in between the two.
3. What about breaking scandals? Usually the incumbent's ratings are already deflated. Politicians who know a little something That Donald Trump has never held elective office will show. Maybe he won't make the same mistakes that career politicians make in office. Maybe he will do catastrophic blunders that career politicians would never do.
But that is in the election. We have three long years to wait before we see the character of the 2020 Presidential race. In the meantime, Donald Trump basically needs to keep an eight-year bear market from collapsing, needs to avoid making more people despise him as a person, needs to do tangible good for Americans who did not vote for him, and may need to deal wisely with some international troubles or a nasty natural disaster. The Presidency can show personal faults for all to see.
Now let's consider what happens when "Governor Goodwill" has an approval rating of 48%. His opponent is average as a challenger. Governor Goodwill might not be a great campaigner, so he is able to parlay his good will into a gain of 3% against his approval rating. That's enough to win with.
The assumption is that the Governor or Senator has won a campaign to win the seat. Appointed politicians as a rule do badly in races for re-election.
In early 2012 I could say with considerable confidence that, when Barack Obama had approval ratings just above 45%, he was going to win.We knew what he was like as a campaigner, and the only wild card was how strong an opponent he would have.
Mitt Romney was about as good a challenger as Obama could have faced, and Romney did unusually well for a challenger against a popular President. He did better than Kerry or Dole -- let alone Mondale or McGovern. (For that matter, Romney did better than Trump...I only wonder how his wife's medical condition was and if that caused him to stay out of the Presidential race).
4. Now what about hidden scandals that break? Usually the incumbent pol has his problems before the scandal. He has something to hide, and secretiveness is not good for winning support of potential voters. Political journalists are keeping their distances from him and not writing laudatory stories that might be embarrassing to the journalist in a couple of months. Fellow pols may avoid him. The scandal-plagued politician typically has problems before things break in the news. Approval ratings are usually down because the pol cannot show the ebullient side of him that he wins campaigns with. I'm not predicting a major scandal on the scale of Watergate or Teapot Dome -- yet. But if something like that emerges, then the President is in deep trouble even before the story reaches the news media.
Paradoxically one can almost ignore those in predicting how a subsequent election will break.
5. Midterm elections. The 2018 elections give Democrats practically zero chance of gaining a Senate or House majority. But if the Democrats have 24 seats to defend and the Republicans only 9, the Democrats have several Republican Governorships to target. Those include Florida, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Should Democrats win the 2018 gubernatorial races in those states, then Republicans will be less capable of winning those states through voter suppression and other chicanery.
And what happens if the Democrats pick up an unlikely Senate seat, let us say in Texas? Such indicates that the wind is blowing in a different direction long before 2018.
NOW -- the WILD CARD!
6. Will we have a free and fair election in 2020? The Republicans apparently have that choice for now.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.