2016: Trump vs President Romney

[BigVic]

Romney wins the 2012 election over President Obama narrowly but struggles to pass his reforms thanks to a 50-50 Senate. 2014 results in a Blue Wave similar to 2006 thanks to the struggling economy and high unemployment. Trump leaves the GOP and returns as a Democrat due to Romney's unpopularity.

With a crowded Democratic field of 24 candidates, Trump announces he will be running as a Dem against "Money Mitt". On Election Day, Romney's approval rating is 43-46% and unemployment is just under 10%. 

Who wins? Discuss with maps

[Chips]

Trump. Romney has probably won FL, OH, VA, CO and PA if he won in 2012. Trump would've likely flipped back OH and PA which would win him the White House.

281-257

[Alben Barkley]

I’m just wondering how the hell Trump won the Democratic nomination. If he acted anything close to the way he did in the real 2016, he would have been buried immediately. He probably never would have been taken as seriously by Democrats as Republicans took him in the first place. The scandals unearthed about him that the GOP shrugged off would not have been shrugged off by Democrats.

And perhaps his biggest problem of all is his long history of blatant racism, from his 70s housing discrimination to his birtherism. You don’t win in this party if black Democrats don’t like you, as we have seen. How the hell is Trump going to get around that? Lots of Democrats would likely still be furious at him for his pro-Romney/anti-Obama rhetoric in 2012 alone. Especially if Romney is so unpopular in this timeline, no one is gonna forgive him for that.

Plus, why would the field be so large? In this 2016 we still have Hillary and possibly Obama himself trying to pull a Cleveland as formidable contenders that could easily clear the field. (Biden probably still doesn’t run because of Beau’s death, but if he does there’s another.) I don’t see as many less prominent candidates trying due to the presence of one or more of those heavyweights, and any who did (e.g. O’Malley) would likely poll poorly and/or drop out early.

Trump would likely get a wave of early media attention, but never do that well in the polls and ultimately crash and burn quickly for the aforementioned reasons. I just don’t see any possible way he could win the nomination. Even in a large fragmented field, I don’t see him having enough support to win with a plurality like he did with the GOP. Someone like Bernie would be more likely to do that, if he still gathers a following. (But not if the moderate candidates consolidate quickly like they did this year.)

If he somehow did win, it’s unclear if he still gets anywhere near the kind of WWC support in rural areas he got running as a Republican. I doubt it. Maybe he stops or slows the bleeding with them somewhat, especially if he still takes populist positions on trade and such, but he is not going to get the same kind of support he gets by appealing to evangelicals and “the poorly educated” (as he calls them) running on what I assume is a pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay marriage, pro-immigration(?) platform. (If he still goes anti-immigrant, he would be DOA in the primaries and with Hispanics in the general.) Doubt he does as well as a Democrat needs to do with black voters or women or in the cities to win either, and he sure isn’t gonna make any in-roads in the suburbs. Even a rather unpopular Romney would likely be the heavy favorite here.

Trump is the kind of guy who can only win in today’s Republican Party. His style is antithetical to what most Democrats value in a candidate, even setting aside policy. It just would not work. Democrats aren’t looking for a businessman to “run the country like a business,” and most would see him for the fraudulent con artist he is anyway.

[LabourJersey]

There is not a single, solitary chance that Trump could have ever won a Democratic primary in 2016.

[tmthforu94]

Ignoring what has already been stated about the implausibility of TRUMP winning the nomination, assuming he somehow did...Romney would have been up by several points post-conventions, but the Billy Bush tapes would have absolutely ruined Trump's chances. While some Democrats would stick with him as "still better than Romney," the Religious Right would rake him over the coals (ironic) and Jill Stein would probably get close to double-digits, if not more. Democrat turnout overall is depressed and Romney wins over enough of the white Democrats in New England to sweep it. Republicans take back the House but fail to win the Senate - there aren't enough seats in 2016 to win it back - possibly an additional pickup in Colorado and New Hampshire while holding Nevada.

President Romney - 492, 54% EV
TRUMP - 46, 35% EV
Stein - 9%

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

You made a fool of yourself by assuming that Trump returns to the Democratic Party only in 2015 or so, which would assure he gets destroyed in the primaries as the other posters have written.

On the other hand, if the timeline diverges from reality in, say, 2008, Donald Trump never enters birtherism and in 2012 he supports Obama against Money Mitt, then Trump would still have problems, but things would be much more interesting.
I honestly believe that he could have done surprisingly well as a Democrat in the right scenario, although probably MANY factors should have aligned the right way.