In a week’s time, Americans will go to the polls for what is known as the mid-term elections. Inevitably, the results will lead to much speculation on what it means for Donald Trump’s chances of re-election in 2020. However, I will be surprised if many commentators will look to history as a guide to 2020 and so I will fill in this gap with the help of fun 10 question quiz about US presidents.
I am trying to promote greater use of what can be called “baseline” forecasting which involves looking at what history says are the chances of an event occurring. Once you have the baseline or historical odds, you can then update your model with additional information and refine your figures. However, many people such as Philip Tetlock have shown that it is quite difficult to do better than baseline forecasting and I gave an example recently where I asked if UK pollsters showed forecasting skill in UK general elections.
To find out what Trump’s historical odds are, I have used Wikipedia to collate data on all US Presidents since 1789. Rather than reporting on my analysis, I thought it would be much more fun and educational for you to do the work by having a go at a quiz consisting of 10 multiple choice questions. You can start the quiz by clicking on the link below.
Start my 10 question quiz on American Presidents since 1789!
I strongly recommend you attempt my quiz first before reading on. After each question, I give the answer along with some historical information (all sourced from Wikipedia). As I explain in the quiz, some of the questions are of direct interest to estimating what history says are Trump’s odds of a 2nd term.
- PLEASE DO NOT SCROLL DOWN UNTIL YOU HAVE HAD A GO AT THE QUIZ
- PLEASE DO NOT SCROLL DOWN UNTIL YOU HAVE HAD A GO AT THE QUIZ
- PLEASE DO NOT SCROLL DOWN UNTIL YOU HAVE HAD A GO AT THE QUIZ
- PLEASE DO NOT SCROLL DOWN UNTIL YOU HAVE HAD A GO AT THE QUIZ
I hope you enjoyed the quiz and learned something! Let’s remind ourselves of the 4 key questions that need to be answered to estimate Trump’s odds of a 2nd Term.
- How likely is it that Trump will complete his first term?
- How likely is it that Trump will decide to seek re-election?
- How likely is it that Trump will be nominated by the Republicans or some other party?
- How likely is it that Trump will win the 2020 Presidential election if he is a candidate?
The quiz introduced the 4-Steps to a 2nd Term which is filled in below with what history says are the answers to the various questions.
My final figures are respectively a 47% chance of winning a 2nd term, a 17% chance of losing the 2020 election and a 36% chance of failing to even contest the 2020 election. As I state in the quiz, these figures can be rounded to 3-2-1 as follows –
- A 3 in 6 chance of winning the 2020 election
- A 2 in 6 chance of not contesting the 2020 election
- A 1 in 6 chance of losing the 2020 election
If you want to check the data for yourselves and refine these numbers then click on this link (List of US Presidents) to download a spreadsheet listing all US Presidents. This has a HELP sheet to explain the data.
So what does history say to Democrats and Republicans? What surprised me was the odds of Trump being unable to contest the 2020 election were much higher than I thought. In fact they are twice the odds of Trump losing in 2020. For Democrats, this would suggest their best tactic is to frustrate Trump as much as possible and obviously this will be easier if they win the House and Senate next week. If they fail to do so and Trump ends contesting the 2020 election, then history says he is 3 to 1 on to win a 2nd Term. For Republicans, whilst these odds are favourable, they do need to make sure that Trump is able to contest the election in the first place and they should not be complacent.
I am by no means the first person to look at what history says are Trumps chances of re-election. This post and quiz was inspired by a paper written by Musa al-Gharbi of Columbia University and The Heterodox Academy. In that paper, al-Gharbi focuses on the 11 presidents since World War 2 and expands on their similarities with Donald Trump. Some of the similarities are quite remarkable and yet Americans still chose to re-elect many of these presidents. He concludes that the historical chances of a 2nd term are higher at 8 out 9 and I strongly recommend you read his paper. Personally, I believe in using as much history as is feasible and I think you have to also allow for the possibility that Trump will not contest the 2020 election.
By now, I hope you have used the information I have provided here to come up with your own forecast. If you would like to share that with me and others, please comment on this Twitter thread.
