20 TheEconomistFebruary 1st 2020
1D
emocrats casttheir first votes in this
year’s presidential primaries at caucus-
es in Iowa on February 3rd. Their ultimate
goal is to nominate a candidate who can
beat Donald Trump in November. That will
not be easy. Despite much political tumult
and an impeachment trial, the president
still has a clear path to re-election.
Mr Trump is unpopular in national
polls. Yet he is a stronger candidate than
headline figures suggest. His approval rat-
ings have hovered around ten percentage
points below his disapproval ratings. Al-
though since 1950 such an unpopular pres-
ident has never won re-election, the his-
torical relationship between a president’s
approval and his share of the two-party
vote suggests Mr Trump should still win
about 49% of votes cast for Democrats and
Republicans in November. The economy
may help. The Federal Reserve forecasts
gdpto grow by about 2% this year. Such an
increase has been associated with past
presidents winning about 50% of the vote.
Of course the electoral college, not the
popular vote, determines who wins. Here,
too, Mr Trump has an advantage. Because
pivotal midwestern states such as Wiscon-
sin and Michigan lean slightly more Re-publican than the nation as a whole, The
Economist’s analysis of polling data sug-
gests Democrats need to win the popular
vote by about two-and-a-half percentage
points to win the White House.
Democrats have thus placed a premium
on selecting a candidate able to beat Mr
Trump. Yet they disagree over who is best
placed to do so. Candidates such as Eliza-
beth Warren and Pete Buttigieg have been
at some points boosted and dogged by such
questions of so-called “electability” over
the course of the campaign. Joe Biden and
Bernie Sanders have emerged as the top
contenders in polls, their support elevated
among working-class whites—the voters
who swung rust-belt states toward Mr
Trump and are likely to decide the election
inNovember.Butthetwocandidates’ elec-toral strategies differ significantly.
Mr Biden has taken the more traditional
approach. In his view, Democrats will win
by wooing back white working-class voters
in midwestern states who deserted the
party in 2016, while keeping black voters’
support. Mr Sanders hopes his populist
message will resonate with disaffected
Democrats, working-class voters and the
young. Who is right? New political-science
research and polling data suggest a moder-
ate candidate popular with working-class
whites would be best poised for victory.
Studies have found that ideologically
extreme candidates can hurt a party’s per-
formance. Andrew Hall and Daniel Thomp-
son of Stanford University found that more
extreme candidates for the House of Repre-
sentatives between 2006 and 2014 in-
creased turnout in their party, but galva-
nised the other party’s voters by four to ten
percentage points more. Christopher War-
shaw, a political scientist at George Wash-
ington University who has carried out sim-
ilar studies, reckons that moderates hold
similar advantages in presidential races.
Mr Trump may have benefited from this
dynamic in 2016. According to the Co-oper-
ative Congressional Election Study (cces),
a 65,000-person poll overseen by Harvard
University, voters thought Hillary Clinton
was about twice as ideologically extreme as
Mr Trump in 2016. This was due largely to
his embrace of some positions considered
unorthodox for Republicans, such as de-
fending Social Security and Medicare.
Here, Mr Biden looks strong. YouGov’s
polling reveals that Americans view him as
the most moderate Democrat, on average.The presidential primariesWho will be Donald Trump’s most
forceful foe?
WASHINGTON, DC
Data suggest that one Democratic candidate would do better than others against
the president in NovemberUnited States
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