--- title: Here's Who Would Win If the 2020 Election is Just Like 2018 description: We gamed out what a presidential election would have looked like in 2018 if one replaces votes for House candidates with votes for president. canonical: https://time.com/5449607/midterm-elections-results-donald-trump-2020/ author: Chris Wilson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-11-08T21:20:46.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T21:59:25.926Z article:section: Politics og:title: Here’s Who Would’ve Won If the Midterms Were a Presidential Election og:description: It doesn't look good for Donald Trump. og:url: https://time.com/5449607/midterm-elections-results-donald-trump-2020/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here’s Who Would’ve Won If the Midterms Were a Presidential Election twitter:description: It doesn't look good for Donald Trump. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Here’s Who Would’ve Won If the Midterms Were a Presidential Election > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Chris Wilson](https://time.com/author/chris-wilson/)  ## Chris Wilson Nov 8, 2018 9:20 PM UTC  by [Chris Wilson](https://time.com/author/chris-wilson/)  ## Chris Wilson Nov 8, 2018 9:20 PM UTC President Donald Trump told his supporters to pretend that he was on the ballot in the midterm elections, and many voters from both parties acted like he was. The [estimated 114 million people](http://time.com/5447210/2018-voter-turnout/) who turned out to vote was within shouting distance of the [137 million](http://www.electproject.org/2016g) who voted in 2016. But what if Trump really had been on the ballot? Out of curiosity, TIME gamed out what a presidential election would have looked like in 2018 if one were to replace votes for House candidates with votes for a presidential candidate of the same party. In this speculative face-off, the hypothetical Democrat wins the White House with 284 electoral votes, well north of the 270 needed to win. Of course, we can’t assume that every person who voted for a member of Congress this year would have voted for a presidential candidate of the same party. But many would have, given [that “split-ticket voting” has declined steadily](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/20/the-striking-evaporation-of-split-ticket-voting/?utm%5Fterm=.c7c6e88bba48) in the past several cycles. The bad news for Trump comes in the essential states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, three traditionally blue states which narrowly broke for him in 2016\. In this year’s midterms, all three cast more votes for Democratic candidates than Republicans in House races, however. He’d also face the prospect of losing Iowa from his 2016 map. But Trump gets some good news from the traditional swing states of Ohio and Florida, which cast more votes for Republicans in House races and would stay in his column. The rest of the 2016 Electoral College map would also stay the same. Overall, Trump also would appear to be on track to lose the popular vote, again. The nationwide tally from the midterm elections heavily favored Democrats, whose House candidates in 2018 received nearly 6 million more votes than their Republican counterparts — more than twice the 2.8 million margin that Hillary Clinton claimed over Trump in the popular vote in 2016. The tally from the hypothetical matchup accounts for the fact that Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes by Congressional district, which awarded one hypothetical electoral vote to the Republicans in Maine’s second district while Democrats carried the state, the same result as in 2016\. The heavily Democratic District of Columbia is assumed to go blue, as it reliably does. This simulation does not account for the 35 Senate races to avoid double-counting voters in some states, but the aggregate House results are generally in line with the Senate results. Democrats won Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as well. With midterms over, the attention of election forecasters now turns directly to 2020, when President Trump will presumably run for reelection against a Democrat who will not be selected for about a year-and-a-half. Who the Democrats ultimately nominate will naturally have tremendous implications for whether this week’s results can be replicated in two years. But given that the popular vote does not translate to an electoral college victory, the results should offer some good news for those hoping that Donald Trump is one-term president. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5449607/midterm-elections-results-donald-trump-2020/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5449607/midterm-elections-results-donald-trump-2020/"},"headline":"Here’s Who Would’ve Won If the Midterms Were a Presidential Election","datePublished":"2018-11-08T21:20:46.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T21:59:25.926Z","description":"We gamed out what a presidential election would have looked like in 2018 if one replaces votes for House candidates with votes for president.","url":"https://time.com/5449607/midterm-elections-results-donald-trump-2020/","keywords":["2018 Elections","Donald Trump","electoral college","interactive studios","2020 elections"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Chris Wilson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/chris-wilson/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/2018-elections/","name":"2018 Elections"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5449607/midterm-elections-results-donald-trump-2020/","name":"Here’s Who Would’ve Won If the Midterms Were a Presidential Election"}}]}] ```