Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump points at delegates after his acceptance speech during the 2016 Republican National Convention July 21, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio.

President Donald Trump's chance at reelection is still over a year away, but he has entered a critical economic period that many investors look at when gauging the odds of a second term.

While many analysts tend to rely on the latest polling data and approval ratings to try to predict election outcomes, Wall Street often uses consumer confidence indicators to try to gauge how people feel about the economy when they head to the polls.

Doug Sosnik, a former advisor to President Bill Clinton, told CNBC that consumer confidence as measured by the Conference Board has proven a valuable predictor dating back to the late 1970s.

When consumer confidence falls during the third quarter of the third year of a president's first term, the president lost his reelection bid since the days of President Jimmy Carter. If consumer confidence rose during the same period, the president was reelected.

"The basic idea is that happy consumers are more highly to want to vote in favor of maintaining the status quo—so it's taken as being good for the incumbent," Nathan Sheets, chief economist at PGIM Fixed Income, said in an email to CNBC.

"Another variation on the theme is the unemployment rate," he added. "The level of unemployment during the spring before a presidential election has historically been a pretty good indicator for the prospects of an incumbent President being re-elected."