History Lessons for Trump: What Are His Chances of Winning?

In the past 100 years, three incumbent U.S. presidents have lost reelection: Herbert Hoover in 1932, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H. W. Bush in 1992. This list could also include two more presidents, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. Both refused to run for a second term, fearing defeat. Truman and Johnson were not losing in their last few days in office because they both withdrew their candidacy several months before Election Day.

It would seem impossible to imagine an American politician less like President Donald Trump than Hoover. Hoover had arguably been the most competent American president in 200 years. He led many major private, public and federal projects with consistent success. Frankly, there should be monuments to Hoover in many cities. He oversaw American aid in the Volga region, feeding 11 million Russians daily. He was an excellent president and ran an extremely successful 1928 election campaign. However, by November 1932, the American economy was at the lowest point of the Great Depression, with the fourth consecutive year of decline in gross domestic product, a 25% unemployment rate, and, most importantly, complete hopelessness in the country.

This hopelessness was fueled by the remarkable persistence with which Hoover continued to pursue the same senseless policy of cutting government spending, insisting that aid to those in need should come from local private charities. To an economist today, this would obviously be stupid, but back in the day, it seemed that closing enterprises was a good idea; the strongest would survive. The biggest implication of declining working-class incomes is decreasing demand for the products of other companies, which causes a spiraling decrease in GDP. In all fairness, this was close to the political consensus of that time, yet it is surprising how intellectually simple the measures were to halt the recession and allow recovery to grow under the new administration. Hoover spent his last year in power alone, occasionally reassuring Americans that the worst of the Great Depression had passed (it had not), and that the economy was on the rise. (It was not.)

The other one-term presidents, Carter and Bush, ended their campaigns more actively than Hoover, but a sense of hopelessness hung over them in their last months. In Carter’s case, he was also unlucky. Let’s say that the economic downturn at the very end of his term was caused by the tight monetary policy of the new Federal Reserve chairman at the time, someone Carter had chosen himself. Hostage negotiations with the Iranian government were unsuccessful, possibly due to the fault of the administration, and from the perspective of the hostages after a failed rescue operation by American special forces. There was also the eruption of the volcano Mount St. Helens during the middle of the election campaign, which killed dozens of people; also definitely bad luck.

President Trump reminds us of Hoover in Trump’s repeated insistence that the COVID-19 outbreak is over (it is not) and that recovery is in full swing. (It is only somewhat better.) Trump has enthusiastically rushed to states where there is only a slight difference in ratings with Biden. In these states, Trump draws crowds and people gather along the highway, like the situation with presidents in 1930 and 1960. He speaks in three or four states a day for about an hour. He does everything he can, including making accusations against Democrats that even those media outlets that actively support him do not have time to report. Although he has the the support of hundreds of White House and campaign staff, Trump is fighting practically alone because the rest of the Republicans are more concerned with their own reelections and post-Trump prospects than with him.

Perhaps the main difference between 2020 and 1932, 1980 and 1992 is that now everything is happening in plain sight. As hopeless as the prospects were in 1932, incidentally, in the fourth year of the Great Depression, Hoover got 40% of the vote. In 1980, the election news appeared daily, not every minute. Election poll results used to be news for a week, but now major poll results are released daily, and some by the hour. Despite the constant noise of polls and insider information in recent weeks, nothing has changed in this race and it is unlikely that something will.