The Meaning of the 2020 Election: FUNDAMENTALLY DIVIDED

In 2016, when Donald J. Trump was elected president over Hillary Rodham Clinton, political science models grounded in the economic “fundamentals” that help forecast electoral outcomes converged on a similar conclusion: it was a toss-up. And so it proved, with Trump earning an Electoral College victory on the basis of fewer than 80,000 votes (out of close to 15 million) spread across three key states even as he fell nearly 3 million votes short of Clinton’s popular vote total nationally.¹ In 2020, though, no one was sure such models would have any utility, given the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession