The Sun Belt has not emerged as a great alternative to Democrats if they can’t hold the Rust Belt states, and that leaves the traditional white, working-class battleground states at the center of the electoral map, and where the president has a relative advantage compared to the country. And although he’s lost a lot of ground in Sun Belt states like Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Florida that are traditionally quite Republican, he hasn’t lost so much ground there that they represent a great option for Democrats instead. Trump won several of those states and was much better than prior Republican candidates, and as a result, he was able to flip them and won the presidency. States like Minnesota and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, traditionally white, working-class battleground states, those are states that Democrats used to be able to count on in presidential elections. And what the data shows when you break it down by state is that the president is holding up relatively well in several states in the Rust Belt. So the president’s approval rating is the best measure of his standing by state, and historically, it’s a good proxy for how people ultimately vote in the general election. Why are you looking at those? How do those help you come to this conclusion about his chances in 2020? nate cohn You keep talking about the president’s approval ratings. O.K., so let’s get into this, because it does feel kind of complicated. I’m pretty agnostic on whether he’s a favorite or not, but he has this important advantage in the Electoral College that gives him a better shot to win than you would think. So I’m not trying to say that the president is especially well positioned to win re-election or something. And it’s particularly frustrating, I think, for some people, because the president’s approval ratings are bad in the critical states like Wisconsin or in Florida or in Pennsylvania. It would be a potentially more confounding style of victory.
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But he would have a better chance to win at a greater deficit in the popular vote. I think the way I would frame it is not that he could do better than 2016. So despite the fact that the president’s approval ratings are quite low, there is not only a clear potential path to re-election for him, he could actually do better than he did in 2016, and that’s because of voters in certain states with a lot of Electoral College votes. So what that means is that if the president can barely hold on to a bunch of states, he gets the same number of Electoral College votes as he would if he had won them by a lot. And in most states, Electoral College votes are awarded on a winner-take-all basis. It works because of the Electoral College. So it allows for the possibility that the president could win the Electoral College and therefore the presidency, while losing the national vote by an even wider margin than he did in 2016. And, in fact, his position in the battleground states with respect to the country is even better than it was in 2016, when he was able to win the presidency while losing the national vote by two points. But despite that, the president is better positioned to win re-election than the national polls suggest, because he is stronger in critical battleground states than he is nationwide.
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So basically, the president’s approval ratings are under water nationwide, which means that there are more people who disapprove of the president than who approve of him. Give us, Nate, the top-line summary of what you reported last week, the thing that riled up a few people.
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Yeah, that would probably be best for my mental health. I think you should consider pacing yourself. Nate, I’ve noticed on Twitter that people are kind of mad at you, and it’s only July of 2019. Nate Cohn on why, in 2020, Democrats will still have such a hard time defeating him.
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Today: The majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump. michael barbaroįrom The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. Transcript Listen to ‘The Daily’: ‘Send Her Back’: White Voters and Trump’s Path to Re-election Hosted by Michael Barbaro, produced by Clare Toeniskoetter, Rachel Quester and Paige Cowett, and edited by Marc Georges and Lisa Tobin We look at how a campaign rooted in racial polarization could affect President Trump’s chances of winning in 2020.