One year out from the 2020 election, the contours of the eventual vote, both demographically and in the Electoral College, seem clear—but the paths both parties may eventually choose to successfully harness these tangible trends remain in flux.
Introduction and summary
The election of President Donald Trump in 2016 defied many normal rules of presidential political strategy and electoral analysis. Consider the lead-up to the 2016 contest: The Democratic Party under former President Barack Obama had won two consecutive elections by solid margins, with majorities of voters backing the nation’s first African American president in his reelection bid against Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 in both the national vote (51 percent to 47 percent) and in the Electoral College (332 votes to 206 votes). Although suffering significant losses in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, the Obama coalition of young people, African Americans, working-class women, and white college graduates—a growing bloc of voters in recent elections in contrast with the Republican Party’s steadily declining base of mostly white and older voters—was poised to deliver a third consecutive term for the Democrats.1
Even with these midterm losses, many pundits thought 2016 was the Democrats’ race to lose on paper. Trump trailed in almost all national polling throughout the fall 2016 campaign season. And despite winning an electoral majority, Trump ultimately failed to command a national majority, losing the popular vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes and more than 2 percentage points nationwide (48.2 percent to 46.1 percent).