Why Trump will win the Captain America election

 

I. 

It is difficult for those on the Right to be dispassionate about the 2020 presidential election when they believe - and I do - that America stands on the verge of a communist takeover if Biden wins. But here I will strive to be impartial and 'objective', and I will not indulge in a polemic against Biden and the Democrats. For it is the case that those who hold strong political opinions, on either the Right or Left, can develop tunnel vision and over time can come to assume that the 'people' think exactly as they do, and it is then that their view has become blinkered, their judgment coloured. And the result is that they will make the wrong call as to who will or will not win an election. 

For it could be - contrary to the opinions of many on the Right - that the American electorate this time around wants socialism, Marxism, communism. Sometimes the electorate can make that decision. The great political pundit and supply-side publicist, Jude Wanniski, wrote that every election gives a choice between economic growth and economic security; between capitalism and socialism; between the (what he calls) the 'mommy' party, which favours security, and the 'daddy' party, which favours risk-taking. There is no reason why in 2020 voters can opt for security over growth, socialism over capitalism, as they did in 2008 and 2012; in other words, there is no reason why they would not vote for the Democratic Party. Biden - who believes that a 'dark winter' lies ahead - definitely prioritises economic security over growth, and the voters may choose him, even though they have been warned, by Biden's opponents on the Right, that his policies will snuff out America's economic recovery and that his cabinet will socialist, crypto-communist; voters may have the reaction, 'So what?' to all that, as they favour a strong social safety net over economic growth. And conservatives and anti-communists have a hard time understanding this preference. The conservatives' dislike of socialism and communism and their antipathy towards a particular left-wing candidate (Obama, Biden) obscures their view of what it is that the electorate wants and how the electorate will vote. 

So, without going into the politics of the matter, without taking on board ideological preconceptions, I will outline in a 'scientific' fashion why it is that Trump will be re-elected. 

II.

The first reason is that historical precedents usually determine American electoral outcomes. Trump, a Republican, is running for re-election, and if he is to lose, the Republicans will have lost the White House after one term for the first time since 1892, a prospect which is possible but highly unlikely. 

Secondly - and looking, as above, at the 2020 election from the viewpoint of history - incumbent presidents running for re-election tend to win a second term: see Clinton in 1996, Bush 45 in 2004, Obama in 2012. (In that vein, it should be noted that men who are running for the presidency and who come from the Senate tend to lose: see Mondale in 1984, Dole in 1996, McCain in 2008. It may be that Biden, another Senator, is to be added to the list). If we are to look back over a hundred year's worth of elections, we will see that the incumbent president has lost re-election only three times: Hoover in 1932, Carter in 1980, and Bush 43 in 1992. But Hoover and Bush 43 were both seeking a record fourth Republican term in the White House, and the incumbent party seeking a third or fourth has the odds stacked against it. (As well as losing re-election, Hoover and Bush 43 hold this in common: they both hiked taxes and caused a recession, and they both were punished by voters for doing so, Bush 43 being voted out exactly sixty years after Hoover's defeat). Here it is Carter that really stands out as the odd man out, the exception proving the rule. 

Third, in order to determine the winner, we should look to what the polls (and betting markets) say as to which candidate is leading in the bellwether state of Ohio. That state has gone with the winner for all the elections after 1892 (that year again), with the exception of two years - 1944 and 1960; Ohio has functioned as the bellwether in 29 out of 31 elections. Now, Trump was leading in the polls and in the betting markets in Ohio on the eve of the 2016 election, and he is leading now; so he may be about to win again. (Despite its track record, many pundits today do not believe that Ohio is a bellwether. For 2020, many pundits have already conceded it to Trump but opine that Biden can without it. Some of them go far as to say that Biden can lose Ohio and Florida and still win. (That in itself seems improbable, given that Florida has gone with the winner for every election after 1992)). 

Fourth, Helmut Norpoth's Primary Model predicts a big Trump win with 362 votes in the Electoral College to Biden's 176 - a real blow-out. (Norpoth's official paper on 2020, which at this point in time no-one but me seems to have read, can be found here). 

Norpoth's prediction rests upon two presuppositions. The first is that the incumbent party is favoured to win the election for a second term, but not a third or fourth. (An election after an incumbent's second term is what the Americans call a 'change' election: see 1960, 1968, 1976, 2000, 2008, 2016). The incumbent party can win a third term only if the size of its popular vote in the election for a second term exceeded that of the first; for example, the Republicans won a third term in 1988 because their share of the popular vote in 1984 had increased upon that of 1980. 

The second presupposition is that the vote in the primaries anticipates that in the general - and in one primary in particular, and that is New Hampshire. That primary serves as a pre-election election. The candidate  who wins big in New Hampshire cruises to victory in the general; the candidate who struggles, loses. For examples of candidates from the incumbent party struggling in New Hampshire and going on to lose the general, see Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980, Bush 43 in 1992, McCain in 2008, Clinton in 2016. For examples of candidates from the incumbent party seeking re-election and who won New Hampshire and then the general decisively, see Truman in 1948, Eisenhower in 1956, Johnson in 1964, Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984, Clinton in 1996, Bush 45 in 2004, Obama in 2012; in those instances, the incumbent faced no significant challengers in New Hampshire, and the election held there was a formality. 

For various reasons, the New Hampshire primary works better than any other in giving us an indication of the results in the general. But in recent years, Norpoth has factored in the results of the South Carolina primary, as South Carolina records the preferences of African-American voters (New Hampshire voters are mostly white). In the 'change' elections of 1992, 2000 and 2008, the opposition party candidate did poorly in New Hampshire and well in South Carolina before going on to win in the general. 

In 2016 - a 'change' election - Trump won easy victories in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, while Clinton lost in New Hampshire and won handily in South Carolina. In 2020, history repeated itself, with Biden standing in for Clinton; Biden was beaten by Sanders in New Hampshire but triumphed over Sanders in South Carolina thanks to black voters. As for the Republican primaries for 2020, Trump won a crushing victory in New Hampshire, and while he did not contest South Carolina - the primary for that state was not held - Norpoth assumes that Trump would have won easily. 

In keeping with his model, then, Norpoth forecasts a Trump win in 2020. 

III.

Does the Norpoth Primary Model stand up to scrutiny? The model considers all the elections from 1912 onwards (1912 is the year in which the two political parties first allowed votes in the primaries). Norpoth uses the Democratic Party share of the two-party popular vote as a constant. He does not predict that vote with great accuracy, as we see from the below table. All the same, we can ascertain from Norpoth's table that the rule is if the Democrat vote falls below 50%, the Democrats lose the election. It is this question - will the Democratic vote fall or rise above 50%? - that Norpoth answers correctly in 22 out of 24 elections. 

The model got it wrong for two elections: 1960 and 2000. Why? For 1960, the model predicts that the Democrat vote would fall well below 50%; in actual fact, Kennedy got 50.1% - an extremely tight win in what was one of the closest elections in American history. For 2000, another close election, Norpoth predicts a vote of 50.2% (a Democratic win) and the actual vote was 50.3%, which was extraordinarily close to Norpoth's prediction; but as we know, Gore narrowly lost in the Electoral College. 

Norpoth can be excused here, I think, because both of these 'change' elections were unusually tight and marred by allegations of irregularities in vote counting. It is only in 2016 that the model really falls down. Then, Norpoth predicted a big drop in the Democratic two-party vote, but in actual fact Clinton won the two-party and lost the College. 

Taking this into account, Norpoth has adjusted his model. He no longer predicts the Democratic vote, only the Democratic performance in the Electoral College. The rule this time is that if the number of Democratic votes fall below 270, the Democrats lose. As we see from below, Norpoth gets it right in 25 out of 27 elections; the two he got wrong were (again) 1960 and 2000. 

The actual Electoral College counts deviate wildly from Norpoth's predictions for the most part, as could be expected; but as we see from the table, he was well within the margin of error for 2012 and 2016. And he anticipated the count for 2016 with precision: he forecast 236 for Clinton and the actual number was 232. This suggests to me that the mathematics of his model are improving.

Assuming that Norpoth is right, then, if Trump is to win 362 Electoral College votes - or thereabouts - he needs to win not only all the states he won in 2016 but some additional states as well, and big ones at that; even Virginia, Minnesota, Nevada will not be sufficient. Trump's performance would need to match that of Reagan and Bush in the Republican landslides of the eighties - 1980, 1984, 1988. Is this possible? Norpoth says yes, as we fail to appreciate how unenthused Democrat voters were for Biden, who came in a distant third behind Sanders and Buttigieg in the New Hampshire primary (as for Harris, Biden's putative successor, she dropped out of the race before the voting began, and nationwide she won only 844 votes - as a write-in).

IV.

Now we have examined Norpoth's model in detail, we can move on to Wanniski's. 

Wanniski's classic The Way the World Works (1978) looks at why it is that the electorate will vote for a candidate who emphasises security over growth. Socialism, he argues, helps tide the electorate through a period of economic contraction, and he warns that if the electorate does not have the socialist escape route in a time of capitalist crisis, a civil war could result. Which is why he says that good socialism beats bad capitalism. 

Wanniski says that while the Right usually blames the Left for causing contractions - Trump, for example, is arguing that Biden's tax hikes would cause a recession, if not a depression - but usually these contractions are brought about by the Right or at least the political establishment. And this was true of American history at the time of writing (1978). Hoover, a Republican, had hiked tariffs and taxes and caused the Great Depression; Nixon, a Republican, had taken America off the gold standard and caused a global inflation. And after the disasters wrought by these two right-wing presidents, left-wing presidents were elected. The pattern is, the Right brings about a contraction and the Left cleans up the mess. The elections of 1992 and 2008 fit the Wanniski model in that regard. 

But the 2020 election breaks the mold. At the start of the year, the Trump bull market was powering ahead, and using the Wanniskian methods of analysis, we see that the Gold Dow (the Dow Jones divided by the price of an ounce of gold) had dropped off from its September 2018 highs and we see that the US dollar had lost value against gold; but we can say overall that Americans were enjoying prosperity in that period. The reason why the markets plummeted was because of the Corona lockdowns, and the lockdowns were engineered by the Left and the liberal political establishment - the responsibility for the economic calamity can be laid at the door of the Left. In WWII, the Allies waged a ferocious strategic bombing campaign against National Socialist Germany with the intention of a) wrecking the German economy, b) killing or at the least demoralising as many Germans as possible and c) persuading Germans to depose their democratically elected leader. In 2020, the liberal establishment has taken up Allied-style strategic warfare, but this time the war is not being waged against Germans but Americans. And it is no coincidence that the lockdowns have also helped further traditionally Marxist objectives. Marriage and the family unit have been put under pressure, as has organised religion; the authority of the state has been increased to an extraordinary degree; and mass unemployment and the downturn in business activity have forced millions to rely upon the state for their subsistence. All of this is unprecedented; Wanniski in his lifetime had never seen anything like it. Given all that, it makes sense to say that in all probability the American voter in 2020 will take revenge on the Left by hurting it in the worst way possible - through a vote for Trump. 

The changed circumstances explain why it is that the Trump platform of 2016 differs from that of 2020. Each election presents different issues to the electorate, and in keeping with this, Trump has changed his tactics. Trump no longer caters exclusively to a white working-class base. Instead, he is attempting to build a multi-ethnic coalition, one which cuts across race and class lines, and the coalition is to be thrown into battle against the radical Left; Trump is in effect forming an anti-communist alliance. Trump is portraying myself as a defender of the American way of life, much of his rhetoric evoking that of the multi-racialist, assimilationist and civic nationalist conservatism of the Cold War. (In some respects, the 2020 election repeats the 1948 election, in which communists infiltrated the Progressive Party and ran Henry A. Wallace - an unsuspecting communist dupe - as a third-party candidate; Wallace is Biden, Trump is Truman). 

While it is possible that Trump's civic nationalist and conservative gambit will not work - perhaps, this time around, Americans will choose Marxism - Wanniski gives a reason as to why Americans will not. 

In Wanniski's world view, the electorate understands economics better than any economist, and it is applied economics - fiscal and monetary policy - that decides almost every election. And what sort of economics does the electorate prefer? Supply-side, of course: for fiscal policy, the electorate wants low tariffs and taxes; for monetary, a gold standard and fixed exchange rates. Wanniski wrote a 2001 article 'Only Supply-side Republicans Win' in which he expounds his theory, here breezing through the history of over 20 presidential elections and using them as case studies to support his hypothesis. 

If we are to look at the 2016 and 2020 elections within Wanniski's framework, we see the following. In 2016, candidate Trump offered big cuts to income and corporate tax, his platform being the work of Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore, two disciples of Wanniski; Trump ran as a supply-sider. In contrast, Clinton wanted to hike taxes, especially taxes on capital gains - a policy which, in the supply-side economic model, would have caused a recession. American voters did not want to commit economic suicide and so voted for Trump. Four years later, we find that history is repeating itself. The Republican candidate is promising tax cuts; the Democratic, tax hikes. Biden is following Clinton's path, and in fact is going further than Clinton - his tax hikes will exceed hers. We can judge from this, then, which of the two candidates, Trump and Biden, is the more supply-side. But we must add this caveat. Neither candidate can be viewed as completely supply-side: Biden and Trump have both been silent on monetary policy - neither of them oppose the depreciation of the dollar - and Trump has not acted as a supply-sider when it comes to trade. But on tariffs, Trump's bark has been worse than his bite, and the tariff wall on trade with America has not reached the dizzying heights of that of the 1930s. In the last analysis, then, Trump is more supply-side than Biden, and so, according to Wanniski's model, Trump wins 2020. 

A stark contrast exists between Biden and Trump. But often, in American history,  neither candidate offers supply-side panaceas. In those cases, the electorate will go with the devil it knows or the candidate it feels will do the least amount of damage. In other elections, the electorate will find such little difference between the candidates so much so that it will have difficulty making up its mind (see 1960 and 2000). 

V.

Many observers detect a lack of enthusiasm for Biden but have difficulty in quantifying it; hence, they will resort to the counting of yard signs and crowd signs. Norpoth's system can quantify enthusiasm or the lack thereof, using the hard empirical evidence of votes tallied in the primaries, and so it gives us reassurance; it tells us that our impressions of the feebleness of Biden's campaign are not based merely on hunches or anecdotal evidence. 

Wanniski performs the same task. We use adjectives such as 'old', 'tired', 'gloomy' to describe Biden, 'vigorous', 'dynamic', 'optimistic' to describe Trump. A mere four years separates the two men in age, so what is that makes Trump seem so fresh and alive? Wanniski would say that it is Trump's economic platform, which aims at growth - one of the favourite words in the supply-side lexicon.

If Norpoth and Wanniski are right, a Trump victory is assured. As for the political implications of the victory - implications that will unfold over the next four years - that is a subject we will have to explore next time.