written by Scott Rasmussen

In January of 2020, President Trump had a consistent lead in the polls, and his re-election prospects were looking good. My assessment at the time was he would be re-elected as long as the economy held up.

None of us anticipated the pandemic that led to unprecedented government lockdowns, harmful school closings, and 40 million people losing their jobs. Given those fundamentals, Biden should have won big, but he barely hung on. That was an early warning sign of just how weak the Democratic brand had become (a warning sign team Biden ignored while in office).

In retrospect, it now appears that the Biden Administration was simply an accident of history brought on by the pandemic. That accident may end up making President Trump's second term more consequential. Trump didn't know what he was getting himself into following the 2016 election from either a personnel or policy perspective. He is far more prepared for his return to office than he would have been following a victory in 2020.

Looking at the larger sweep of history, this was the tenth election in a row where no candidate topped 53% of the vote. And it looks like this will be the fifth of those ten races where the winner failed to reach even 50% of the vote. (At the moment, Trump looks likely to win about 49.8% of the vote.)

With control of the Senate and the House, President Trump will have the opportunity to end that cycle by reaching out to more centrist voters-including Democrats-who reject the extremism of progressive Democrats.

It remains to be seen whether he will grasp that opportunity and set the stage for a landslide election that America so desperately needs.