NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Sixteen months before the 2020 presidential election, according to an election forecast model designed by Dr. Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, President Donald Trump will not win.
“Trump’s 2016 path to the White House was the political equivalent of getting dealt a Royal Flush in poker,” said Bitecofer. “It’s probably not replicable in 2020 with an agitated Democratic electorate.”
In 2018, Bitecofer’s “Negative Partisanship” model predicted the 40-seat gain by Democrats in the midterm elections almost to the seat – four months before the polls opened, when other election forecasts were still debating whether the Democrats could pick up the 23 seats needed to take control of the House.
The model has been refined with state-by-state voting data from 2018 and predicts that 2020 turnout in both parties will surge beyond the 2016 numbers.
Bitecofer said Trump will be competitive, but a repeat of the Democratic and Democratic-leaning Independent voter backlash evident in 2018 will determine the result.
“The country’s hyperpartisan and polarized environment has largely set the conditions of the 2020 election in stone,” Bitecofer said. “The complacent electorate of 2016, who were convinced Trump would never be president, has been replaced with the terrified electorate of 2020. Under my model, that distinction is not only important, it is everything.”
Click here to learn more or to view the full forecast.
Bitecofer’s work has been featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Cook Political Report, and other state, national and international media outlets.