9 ways the 2020 presidential race could turn out

There’s less than a week until the presidential election and it’s still up in the air which way the results will go.

Channel 9 political reporter Christopher Heath pulled together a list, in no particular order, of different possible outcomes. Spoiler alert: No. 9 is possible, but hasn’t happened since 1837.

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1. Trump II - In 2016, President Donald Trump won 306 electoral votes, but did not break 50% in six states, including Florida.  Removing Utah from the six (there is no Evan McMullin on the ballot in 2020), it is possible for Trump to win the other five and pick up 306 electoral votes again.

2. Biden “build back the blue wall better” - Three of the six states that Trump did not crack 50% in are: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. In Wisconsin and Michigan, the Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson took 3.6% of the vote, and took 2.4% in Pennsylvania. If Biden can retain all the states won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and add the three “blue wall” states where Trump was under 50%, then he’d amass 281 electoral votes.

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3. Oh, Florida… It’s Pennsylvania – The Biden blue wall requires Pennsylvania, which has been a hotly-contested state in 2020 and could see a significant number of mail ballots tossed out for not being submitted in the proper way. If this happens, a team of election lawyers will be putting their kids through college on the litigation fees.

4. Larger vote loss – In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote by 2,868,519 votes. Right now, the website FiveThirtyEight is giving Trump a 4% chance of winning the popular vote and just a 2% chance of winning more than 50% of the popular vote.  If Trump wins the electoral college, but loses the popular vote again, this will be the third time since 2000 that the winner of the election did not win the most votes.

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5. Oh, Florida… It’s Arizona – So, remember the blue wall needing Pennsylvania?  That’s not exactly right. Biden can break 270, but will need to replace Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes with Arizona’s 11 electoral votes. Arizona is one of the six states where Trump did not break 50% in 2016.

6. A polling error in your favor – Polls are a snapshot in time and can only forecast the future with a degree of uncertainty. It is entirely possible that a polling error in 2016 could replay in 2020.  However, given where the polls are as of Oct. 27, in the RCP average and the size of the polling error in 2016, Trump would only win the battlegrounds of North Carolina, Wisconsin and Iowa. All the other battlegrounds are outside the 2016 error, as of today.

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7. Latino surge – Polling from Texas and Florida shows Trump improving on his numbers with Latino voters when compared to 2016. This week both parties went up on the air in New Mexico with ads in the Senate race, which had not been considered competitive. It’s also worth noting that the final averages of polling out of Nevada in 2016 had Clinton losing (she won the state).  If Trump can hold his states from 2016 and pick up Nevada and New Mexico he will finish with 11 more electoral votes than he had in 2016.

8. Landslide – The thing about a margin of error is that it goes in both directions. In No. 6, we discussed that polls could be wrong again in Trump’s favor, but those same polls could be wrong in Biden’s favor. If this happens, we could see Biden well above 300 electoral votes: even pushing past 375 doesn’t even require winning states like Texas.

9. 269 – It’s a tie. Brush up on Article 2, Section 1, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution and hunker down; 2020 ain’t done with us yet.

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