(This post originally appeared in dailycaller.com | Image from dailycaller.com)
By Stephen E. Strang
Bannon Is Right: Trump Will Top 400
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon made a bold prediction at the recent Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C. “President Trump’s not only going to finish this term,” he said, “he’s going to win with 400 electoral votes in 2020.” Predictably, the mainstream media scoffed at the idea. The editors of Vanity Fair were only giving Trump a 30 percent chance of finishing his first term, and Bannon was already predicting a second victory.
In the past 50 years, the only incumbent president to win with more than 400 electoral votes was Ronald Reagan, with 525. Bill Clinton got 379 electoral votes in 1996, George W. Bush hit 286 in 2004, and Barack Obama reached 365 in 2008. Trump won with 304 electoral votes in 2016 while his opponent topped out at 227. So what, pray tell, was Bannon thinking?
If the outspoken Breitbart editor is right, Trump will need 100 more votes than he received in 2016. A risky proposition, indeed, but I’m convinced Bannon got it right. Furthermore, saying it at the Values Voter Summit was a smart move, because it was the evangelical vote that put Trump over the top. Evangelicals gave the Republican candidate a whopping 82 percent of their votes, while Clinton received just 16 percent—the lowest number ever recorded for a Democratic presidential candidate.
