What if Donald Trump is super popular in 4 years?

If the economy keeps improving, he might be

Donald Trump and his adoring fans.
(Image credit: EPA/SHAWN THEW)

Friday's jobs report was more evidence of the kind of slow, plodding improvement we've grown accustomed to since the end of the Great Recession. But now that Donald Trump is about to become president, what happens if the slow, plodding improvement keeps up? The answer is a nightmare for Democrats: Come 2020, Trump could be very popular.

Political science suggests the economy is enormously important in predicting how an election will swing. In fact, the most stupidly simple models of Americans' voting behavior — the ones that account for the economy, which party is incumbent in the White House, Americans' natural tendency to change course, and little else — predicted the outcome of the 2016 election just fine. In fact, they were saying Trump was the likely victor months ago. It's just no one believed them.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.