Cory Booker vs Donald Trump

[Vosem]

Yeah, without a problem. He'd increase black turnout back to 2008 levels (2012, when it was even higher, wouldn't even be necessarily), add that to the Hillary coalition, and that's a win there, without accounting for other effects like generational trends or the likely collapse of the third-party vote.

Trump almost certainly needs to gain some supporters somewhere to win again in 2020. It seems pretty clear in polling that he's so far been unable to do this.

[Vosem]

To elaborate, if Booker can stay at the same level as Clinton but motivate just a few more black voters, it's really not that hard to get to this map:

307-216, with 15 electoral votes in North Carolina too close to call. I see no reason Booker can't achieve this in basically the same environment as 2016 was held in. What the environment will be like in 2020 isn't really up to Booker or Trump, and could move voters from one side to another.

I find the idea that Booker could cause more WWCs to move from Clinton to Trump to be extremely dubious -- by 2020 it'll be clear that Trump can't bring about his promises of bringing back manufacturing -- but even if this is the case the only states that would be put at risk are NH, ME, and perhaps WI -- not enough to break the Democratic victory on this map.

One of the key points is: for Democrats to win in 2020, no actual Trump voters from 2016 need to be persuaded over. It would help, but it's unnecessary. Better turnout or convincing third-party voters is sufficient.