President Trump Could Lose 5 Million Votes And Still Win In 2020

President Trump could lose the popular vote by as many as 5 million votes and still win reelection, according to David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report. Of course, this is not a likely scenario for 2020.

But The New York Times’ Nate Cohn believes it’s possible the president could win while losing the popular vote by as much as 5 percent. Other number-crunchers, including CNN’s Harry Enten, are looking at the same issues driving Wasserman’s analysis. So, probably, is the Trump campaign.

Focus on the Electoral College

The edge for Trump begins where 2016 left off, with the Electoral College. Democrats want to rely on a rising, more splintered voter pool. But Wasserman finds the two largest diversifying states almost certainly do not help Democrats. California is already solidly blue; Texas remains red enough that Trump’s margin could shrink by 800,000 and still win the state. Diversifying voter pools are similarly unhelpful to Democrats in the solidly blue states of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington, and Oregon.

Conversely, the Great Lakes and Rust Belt states, which decided the 2016 election, likely remain decisive for 2020. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin have high shares of working-class, white voters and are diversifying far more slowly than California or Texas. Moreover, a New York Times analysis of census data from Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin indicates Republican midterm losses occurred largely due to a fall-off among working-class, white voters.