In 2016, Michael Moore was one of the only public figures to predict Donald Trump's election before it occurred. Now, Moore thinks that Trump will be re-elected because he believes that Trump will again be able to capture the 270 Electoral College votes required to win the presidential election. However, Moore also believes there is a way to stop Trump from winning in 2020 — an Electoral College "work-around" where states award their electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote.
Moore made his predictions about the 2020 presidential election during an interview with Fast Company. Moore noted that while he believes that more people will vote against Trump in 2020 than they did in 2016, Trump will still win as a result of the Electoral College, saying:
[Trump will be re-elected] ... I should say re-appointed, because we will have an even larger population that will vote against him in 2020. ... But he will win those electoral states as it stands now.
Moore's comments reference the fact that Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by over 3 million votes in 2016, but won the election with a rather significant Electoral College margin of 306-232. Moore noted that he believes this popular vote-Electoral College disparity is bound to happen again unless states re-evaluate the way in which their electoral votes are counted.
But how would states go about this? Moore's said states need to implement the National Popular Vote interstate compact which requires states to give their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote. It has currently been approved by 10 states and Washington, D.C., though it would not go into effect unless states that have a combined total of 270 electoral votes or more have approved it — a distant goal, at least for now.
Moore believes that establishing this compact as law constitutes one of the best ways in which Trump can be prevented from securing victory in 2020. However, actually getting the compact passed is an uphill battle, as is defeating an incumbent president.
Nonetheless, he stressed that there is reason to think Trump can be defeated in 2020, though it will take work beyond implementing the National Popular Vote interstate compact. Moore told Fast Company that it is important that Americans unite behind the candidate seeking to unseat Trump in 2020. He also stressed that he believes that it is crucial to encourage young people to vote and to win back some of the voters who voted for Obama in 2012 but neglected to vote for Clinton in 2016.
For his part, the filmmaker is seeking to make activists out of the general public, in part by encouraging them through his play, Terms of My Surrender, to become actively engaged in politics and public life.
Overall, while Moore does believe that Trump will be re-elected as president in 2020 if the status quo remains, he does think that there are many concrete actions that legislators and the American people can take in order to thwart a Trump re-election in the next presidential race. Time will tell if Americans heeded Moore's advice.
