Trump’s most obvious strength heading toward 2020 is the enduring and enthusiastic support of his base. “I would say the most distinctive thing about him other than his obnoxiousness is that his followers aren’t a base,” Sabato said. “They’re a cult. This is a cult. They’ve ceded their independent thinking to this man. This is the most intense cult that I can remember in American politics.” Though their intensity might not be apparent in this fall’s midterm elections, because Trump isn’t on the ballot, they’ll likely show up in massive numbers to support Trump’s reelection in 2020. “If Trump isn’t removed from office and doesn’t lead the country into some form of global catastrophe, he could secure a second term simply by maintaining his current level of support with his political base,” Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik wrote in The Washington Post in October. “Since Trump’s inaugural address, his focus has been on maintaining his support among this loyal base rather than expanding it. As counterintuitive as it may seem, this could be a winning political strategy.”

Sosnik argued that Trump can’t win a two-person race with this strategy, but wrote that the president might have another pathway: “The lack of voters’ faith in both parties increases the probability that there will be a major third-party candidate on the 2020 ballot. It will also lead to other minor-party candidates joining the presidential race. The multi-candidate field will further divide the anti-Trump vote, making it possible for him to get reelected simply by holding on to his current level of support.”

One prominent Democratic strategist told me Trump is most likely to win if he runs as an independent candidate himself. “I think he’s positioned himself from the beginning to run outside the Republican Party, and frankly I think that’s his best option,” said Tad Devine, who served as Bernie Sanders’s senior strategist in the 2016 presidential primary. (Devine thinks Republicans might distance themselves from Trump after he costs them dearly in the midterms.) “Path number two is that the country moves along for three years and continues to create jobs, and there’s no new war that breaks out, and he wins the Republican nomination without contest, and the Democrats have a long and bitter fight,” he said.

Devine isn’t particularly worried about the latter possibility. He calls Trump “the greatest unifier of the Democratic Party,” and said, “I don’t think there will be a problem for Democrats to get behind whoever wins the nominating process.” But not everyone is so sure. “What are the chances you’re going to have that many Democrats fighting among themselves and not have permanent splits, rifts, and divides in the general election?” asked Sabato. “Just look at Hillary and Bernie.” Sabato also noted the third-party factor, telling me, “Inevitably, they’ll take far more votes from a Democratic candidate than Trump.... The more options you have to vote against Trump, the worse it is for the Democratic nominee.”