Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign
, a member of the Republican Party, sought re-election in the 2020 United States presidential election. He was inaugurated as president of the United States on January 20, 2017, and filed for re-election with the Federal Election Commission on the same day. This was Trump's third run for President, his second with the Republican Party, and the only campaign Trump ran as an incumbent.
Trump began his re-election campaign unusually early for an incumbent president, beginning to spend money on the re-election effort within weeks of his election. From February 2017 onward, Trump held more than 150 rallies and fundraisers for this campaign, visiting key electoral states. The campaign also raised funds and ran two nationwide advertising campaigns. Trump said in several stump speeches that the slogans for the 2020 race would be "Keep America Great" and "Promises Made, Promises Kept". On November 7, 2018, Trump confirmed that Mike Pence would be his vice presidential running mate in 2020.
Trump's 2020 re-election bid was ultimately unsuccessful; the Democratic Party ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election. This marked the first time since 1992 that an incumbent president lost reelection. Trump refused to accept the results; he and his allies made disproven claims of fraud, pressured elections officials, filed several unsuccessful lawsuits,
and directly attempted to overturn the results at the county, state, and federal level. This culminated in the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, for which Trump was impeached a second time. The day after the attack, Trump stated that a "new administration" would be succeeding his, without mentioning president-elect Biden by name, in a video posted on Twitter. Had Trump been re-elected to a second consecutive term, he would have been the first Republican to win two consecutive presidential elections since George W. Bush in 2004. He would also have been the oldest U.S. president to be elected president twice at the age of 74 years, 4 months, and 20 days, surpassing Ronald Reagan in 1984. If he had won in 2020, he would not have been eligible to run again in 2024 due to term limits set by the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution. Trump did subsequently run for a re-election campaign four years later in 2024. He was successfully elected to a second, non-consecutive term as the 47th president of the United States in 2024 with JD Vance as his running mate.
Background
Trump's predecessors merged their campaign committees into their party's committee following their election victories. Following his 2016 election victory, Trump eschewed this presidential tradition and retained a separate campaign committee which continued raising funds. In December 2016, the campaign raised $11million. These moves indicated that Trump was already eyeing a 2020 run.Trump started spending money on the 2020 race on November 24, 2016. The earliest campaign disbursement that his committees reported was spent towards the 2020 presidential primaries was for the purchase of a Delta Air Lines ticket on this date. Trump officially filed his re-election campaign with the FEC on January 20, 2017, the day of his inauguration. Trump launched his re-election campaign earlier in his presidency than his predecessors did. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan all declared their candidacies for reelection in the third year of their presidencies. His successor, Joe Biden, also declared his initial reelection campaign for the 2024 election in the third year of his presidency. Trump filed the papers for his re-election campaign approximately 47 months prior to the date of the election. In contrast, both Reagan and George H. W. Bush did so approximately twelve, George W. Bush approximately 18, and both Clinton and Obama approximately 19 months before those elections.
While previous presidents had held rallies in the early days of their presidency to garner support for legislation, such rallies differed from Trump's in that they were funded by the White House rather than by campaign committees. One of the advantages of having his campaign committee fund the events is that organizers can more discriminately screen attendees, refusing entry to non-supporters. Trump's February 2017 rally in Melbourne, Florida, was the earliest campaign rally for an incumbent president.
By filing for his campaign as early as he did, Trump gave himself a head start on fundraising. This theoretically helped discourage primary challengers.
Since his three predecessors won re-election, had Trump been reelected, it would have been the first time in American history that four consecutive presidents were elected to two consecutive terms.
Permanent campaign
Although Trump's early campaign filing was extraordinarily unusual, aspects of a "permanent campaign" are not entirely unprecedented in American politics. Such a phenomenon had a presence in the White House at least as early as the presidency of Bill Clinton. Under the advice of Sidney Blumenthal, Clinton's staff continued to engage in campaign methodology once in office, using polling for assistance in making decisions.Political observers who bolster the opinion that a permanent campaign has had a significant impact on recent presidencies argue that decisions by presidents have increasingly been made with considerations to their impact on voter approval.
The concept of a permanent campaign also describes the focus which recent presidents have given to electoral concerns during their tenures in office, with the distinction between the time they have spent governing and the time they have spent campaigning having become blurred. Political observers consider the rise in presidential fundraising as a symptom of the permanent campaign.
The disproportionately large amounts of time presidents have spent visiting key electoral states has been pointed to as evidence of ulterior electoral motives influencing presidential governance, emblematic of the blurred lines between campaigning and governance in the White House. For instance, George W. Bush embarked on 416 domestic trips during his first three years in office. This was 114 more than his predecessor Bill Clinton made in his first three years. In his first year, 36% of Bush's domestic trips were to the 16 states that were considered swing states after having been decided the closest margins during the 2000 election. In his second year, 45% of his domestic travel was to these states, and his third year 39% of his domestic travel was to these states.
According to the Associated Press, a data analysis firm named Data Propria, launched in May 2018 to provide ad-targeting services and run by former officials of Cambridge Analytica, is working on public relations for the Trump 2020 re-election campaign.
Political positions
Emerging from the 2020 convention, the campaign agenda for a second term was primarily to build on the first term agenda.As some George Floyd protests included violent incidents, Trump emphasized "law and order" as a major campaign theme, directing particular criticism at antifa. Trump and attorney general Bill Barr asserted that antifa had organized the protests, although there was no evidence to support that. Barr had also baselessly linked antifa to the Black Lives Matter movement. Three August 2020 DHS draft reports did not mention antifa as a domestic terrorism risk and ranked white supremacy as the top risk, higher than that of foreign terrorist groups. Brian Murphy — until August 2020, the DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis — asserted in a September 2020 whistleblower complaint that Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf and his deputy Ken Cuccinelli instructed him "to modify intelligence assessments to ensure they matched up with the public comments by President Trump on the subject of ANTIFA and 'anarchist' groups" and to downplay the severity of risk associated with white supremacy. Murphy said he refused. The campaign sent a fundraising text message to supporters in September 2020 stating an "ANTIFA ALERT," continuing, "They'll attack your homes if Joe's elected."
The vilification of protesters extended to a threat to list "Antifa" a "designated terrorist" group.
[|The advertisement] showed an inverted red triangle as an antifa symbol.
Many people saw this as offensive, because the Nazis has used the symbol on the uniforms of their political opponents in concentration camps.
Top officials tried to keep dossiers on identified protesters, whom they intended to blame for a terrorist plot that did not exist. The purpose was to help Trump win re-election.
Approval ratings
, while rising slightly throughout the second half of his first term, have generally shown Trump to be one of the least popular presidents in the history of modern opinion polling during a presidential election year. Political observers point out that presidential job approval is highly partisan, with Gallup writing in March 2020:The 92% approval among Republicans and 42% among independents are close to his highest ratings for those groups. Meanwhile, his approval rating among Democrats, currently 8%, hasn't been above 13% since he took office in February 2017. The current 84-point gap in approval between Republicans and Democrats is just a few points shy of the record polarization Gallup found in late January and early February.In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in early spring 2020, Trump's approval rating saw a small but notable rally in support, followed by a tick-down in mid-2020. In June and July 2020, public polling showed Trump's approval significantly weakening.