The 2020 election could go one of two ways, both of which depend on the Democratic nominee. It will either be a contest between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, or Trump will face Elizabeth Warren.
At least, that’s what a recent New York Times poll concludes, and there are plenty of other polls supporting it. This race has three top runners now — four if you include Bernie Sanders, though it seems more than likely that Warren will flatten or devour Sanders’s support base in the coming months.
The Times poll also makes an early prediction: If the candidate is Biden, Trump will lose. If the candidate is Warren, Trump will win.
It all comes down to the battleground states, many of which the president carried in 2016. The Times’s prediction — volatile and potentially worthless as it might be — makes a lot of sense when you look at why Trump won states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina in the first place.
These voters weren’t Republican, but they weren’t committed Democrats either. Many of them were self-described moderate, blue-collar workers who had grown tired of depending on labor unions and were looking for economic reform. Take, for example, Michigan: Trump won about 500,000 union household votes in the automotive state, according to exit polls, and narrowly flipped the state. The situation was the same in Ohio. Hillary Clinton lost union households to Trump by 9 points, according to exit polls.
Biden has been doing all he can in recent months to win back the Rust Belt for the Democratic Party, introducing himself as “Middle-Class Joe” (despite the fact that no one besides Biden actually believes he’s middle class). But his attempt at familiarity could work for the same reason that it worked for former President Barack Obama.
Obama won union households in 2012 by 18%. In Michigan, Obama bested Mitt Romney in union households by 33%, and in Ohio, he won them by 23%. But Clinton never enjoyed that kind of advantage. At best, she had about a 13% advantage among union workers in Michigan, according to exit polls. Union workers ditched Hillary, but they did not suddenly become Republicans. Someone like Biden can still win them back.
Warren, on the other hand, faces the same problems Clinton did in 2016. The Times poll suggests voters question Warren’s “likeability” and have concerns about her ideology and gender. Her platform is too extreme for many likely voters, and unless she moderates her image, it’s likely Trump will carry the battleground states once again. In fact, the Times poll says likely voters chose Trump over Warren in every one of the six battleground states except for Arizona, where they were even.
Trump didn’t fare as well among likely voters when placed opposite Biden, who carried five of the six battleground states in the Times poll. But Trump’s advantage in the Electoral College remains the same and has even grown, according to the Times. The poll hints that even if Warren were to win the popular vote, Trump could still win the presidency.
The 2020 election is still more than a year away. If there’s one thing we should have learned from 2016, it’s not to count our chickens before they’ve hatched. But Warren’s campaign is gaining traction, and Biden’s is lagging behind. If recent and past polls are any indicator, a disenchanted blue-collar voter base, faced with a Warren candidacy, might just hand Trump a second term.
