Maybe I needed to be clearer. I think that Trump is going to end up with a percentage of the popular vote similar to that of Carter in 1980 (about 41%) which is about 5% off his percentage of the popular vote in 2012. The states are much more polarized than when Carter was President, so it will be harder for Trump to lose more than 400 electoral votes... but he can.
Every state that he won or lost by 10% or less has at one time or another shown an approval number lower than his disapproval number. It is difficult to win a state under those circumstances, barring a split on the Other Side. The elder Bush had Ross Perot taking away more potential R votes than D votes in 1992. The elder Bush lost to Bill Clinton 370-168.
The difference between Trump going into 2020 and Dubya going into 2004 is most obviously that Dubya got away with much trouble that would not become obvious until after he was re-elected. I don't see Trump's "my way or the highway" attitude winning over any significant number of added Republican voters. Getting those new voters will be difficult because although the oldest voters (55+)of 2016 will have a significant die-off (about 1.5% per year) among groups that are roughly 5% more R than D (Silent, Boom, and first-wave X) the new, younger voters under 40 are about 20% more D than R. That itself suggests a 1.5% shift in the vote from 2016 to 2000 if nothing else happens. That alone will be enough to flip Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from Trump wins to Trump losses. Florida is within that range, except that Florida tends to get a steady stream of older voters... but if that happens, then the shift occurs elsewhere, as in Arizona or North Carolina. Ouch.
Dubya had his faults, but he was not impeached. There remains some ideological divide on whether Trump should or should not have been removed... but impeachment requires two-thirds of the Senate in concurrence to that effect.
Now -- what does Trump have to offer younger voters to offset the partisan edge that recent voting behavior suggests? Not much. The tax cuts reward people who have tax bills. Trump promised infrastructure -- but with roads, such means "add tolls", which will do more to lighten traffic loads than to lead to improvements. Economic inequality, which generally hurts younger workers who endure the lowest pay in the workforce, is at a level not known since the 1920's. Young adults are often deep in debt for college degrees necessary for getting white collar work other than retail sales... and they see low glass ceilings for them unless they are born into the "right family".
Trump fits Millennial values badly. Millennial adults as a group have little use for racism, ethnocentrism, or religious bigotry. His pattern of disregard for objective truth (if not outright lying) offends a Civic generation that, like others in the past, prefers reason to propaganda. The Millennial Generation has voted in low numbers so far -- at least until 2018. I look at the 2018 midterm election as a suggestion that electoral behavior of Millennial adults is changing; they seem set to vote in large numbers. It is my assumption that people who start voting in increased numbers keep voting until they are no longer able to vote due to death or debility.
I am satisfied that President Trump will keep a strong hold on his base of old, anti-intellectual voters who accept the promise of pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die. Maybe people in their seventies are more concerned about the more imminent Hereafter than are whippersnappers in their twenties whop assume that they have much life ahead of them to suffer or endure depending to no small part on the economic conditions in which they live. I also expect that the Right will do everything possible to make politics confusing. Trump won in part by soiling the political process so that people who like their politics to not go into the ideological and moral cesspool to decide that political life is just too dirty for them. .
Every state that he won or lost by 10% or less has at one time or another shown an approval number lower than his disapproval number. It is difficult to win a state under those circumstances, barring a split on the Other Side. The elder Bush had Ross Perot taking away more potential R votes than D votes in 1992. The elder Bush lost to Bill Clinton 370-168.
The difference between Trump going into 2020 and Dubya going into 2004 is most obviously that Dubya got away with much trouble that would not become obvious until after he was re-elected. I don't see Trump's "my way or the highway" attitude winning over any significant number of added Republican voters. Getting those new voters will be difficult because although the oldest voters (55+)of 2016 will have a significant die-off (about 1.5% per year) among groups that are roughly 5% more R than D (Silent, Boom, and first-wave X) the new, younger voters under 40 are about 20% more D than R. That itself suggests a 1.5% shift in the vote from 2016 to 2000 if nothing else happens. That alone will be enough to flip Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from Trump wins to Trump losses. Florida is within that range, except that Florida tends to get a steady stream of older voters... but if that happens, then the shift occurs elsewhere, as in Arizona or North Carolina. Ouch.
Dubya had his faults, but he was not impeached. There remains some ideological divide on whether Trump should or should not have been removed... but impeachment requires two-thirds of the Senate in concurrence to that effect.
Now -- what does Trump have to offer younger voters to offset the partisan edge that recent voting behavior suggests? Not much. The tax cuts reward people who have tax bills. Trump promised infrastructure -- but with roads, such means "add tolls", which will do more to lighten traffic loads than to lead to improvements. Economic inequality, which generally hurts younger workers who endure the lowest pay in the workforce, is at a level not known since the 1920's. Young adults are often deep in debt for college degrees necessary for getting white collar work other than retail sales... and they see low glass ceilings for them unless they are born into the "right family".
Trump fits Millennial values badly. Millennial adults as a group have little use for racism, ethnocentrism, or religious bigotry. His pattern of disregard for objective truth (if not outright lying) offends a Civic generation that, like others in the past, prefers reason to propaganda. The Millennial Generation has voted in low numbers so far -- at least until 2018. I look at the 2018 midterm election as a suggestion that electoral behavior of Millennial adults is changing; they seem set to vote in large numbers. It is my assumption that people who start voting in increased numbers keep voting until they are no longer able to vote due to death or debility.
I am satisfied that President Trump will keep a strong hold on his base of old, anti-intellectual voters who accept the promise of pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die. Maybe people in their seventies are more concerned about the more imminent Hereafter than are whippersnappers in their twenties whop assume that they have much life ahead of them to suffer or endure depending to no small part on the economic conditions in which they live. I also expect that the Right will do everything possible to make politics confusing. Trump won in part by soiling the political process so that people who like their politics to not go into the ideological and moral cesspool to decide that political life is just too dirty for them. .
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.