Moody’s Analytics released a report by their Chief Economist that highlighted the results of their Presidential economic prediction model. Moody’s model is based on a variety of economic factors including unemployment, stock market returns and a variety of pocketbook metrics. Moody’s model has correctly predicted all the elections since 1980 except one … the 2016 election of Donald Trump (they had predicted a narrow Hillary Clinton win).
So what does Moody’s say about the 2020 election? Moody’s base case is that President Trump will win by 332 electoral votes to 206 by “hold[ing] on to key industrial Midwest states and pick up New Hampshire, Virginia and Minnesota, assuming historical average nonincumbent tunout.” Moody’s then offers two alternative scenarios, one based on a very high level of turnout and one based on a lower level of turnout. Under the very high turnout scenario, the Democrat candidate would win in a squeaker by 279 electoral votes to 259 for Trump with Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia and New Hampshire moving to the Democrats. In the lower turnout scenario, Trump wins in a landslide 380 electoral votes to 158 votes by picking up traditional Democratic states including Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maine.
Economic models are not perfect, but they also should not be ignored. Indeed, Moody’s model is among the best predictive models. One could argue that President Trump is an unconventional President so that the predictive value of the model may be less useful in 2020. We don’t disagree, but we believe that the strong economy highlights that President Trump is starting with a significant advantage versus his Democrat opponent.
We also find it interesting that Moody’s analysis shows several New England states to be in play. Moody’s has New Hampshire, Maine and Connecticut as potential swing states that in certain scenarios would be captured by Trump. In fact, Moody’s suggests that if turnout is low, Trump would likely win in Connecticut by a narrow 51%-49% margin, a result that has not occurred since the 1980s. New England may not be as blue as many commentators believe.
NewEnglandPolitics.com 