Pruden: An imaginary look at an imaginary 2020 election

The polls haven’t yet opened, and it’s already time to count the ballots. Everybody wants to know who won next year. It’s not much of a horse race yet, but we’ve got a lot of horses, even if most of them will eventually run straight to the glue works.

But for those who can’t wait to know who won next year, a new poll of Wall Street insiders finds that 70 percent of those polled told the RBC Capital Markets investment they expect Donald Trump to win election to a second term. Since money talks and bullshine walks, a lot of investors will take this to the bank.

This accords with what the economists at Goldman Sachs, the loudest voice on the street, are telling their followers. Incumbent presidents have a “built-in advantage” of 5 to 6 percent of the popular vote, says Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s chief economist, and that counts for a lot.

“The advantage of first-term incumbents and the relatively strong economic performance ahead of the presidential election suggests that President Trump is more likely to win.” A close call, perhaps, but a close call it all it takes. A close call is what got Donald Trump to the White House.

Wall Street, like everyone else, called it for Hillary Clinton in 2016, so the opinion of these highly paid economists might be worth no more than the opinion of your neighborhood bartender. So you might as well as ask Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, late of the bartending profession, who affects to know it all.

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