The presidential race  is up in the air and the political climate in 2016 will be unpredictable, but that’s no reason for pessimism in the financial industry, said a seasoned political strategist.

In his remarks on the opening day of the Schwab IMPACT 2015 conference on Tuesday, Greg Valliere said that in the final year of a lame-duck Obama administration, the president is likely to make unilateral policy decisions.

“This White House is going to be unable to get anything further done legislatively, so it will try to govern through regulations, and there’s no more prime example than the ridiculous financial advisor rule,” said Valliere, chief political strategist for Charlotte, N.C.-based Horizon Investments. “Despite massive opposition from the financial industry, it will come out this coming spring.”

The Department of Labor is considering a rule that would extend the fiduciary standard to all financial service providers.

Valliere says another issue unites members of the financial services industry this year, regardless of their political leaning.

“Never in my career have I seen the consensus like I’ve seen in our industry to do it already. ... Raise interest rates. Virtually everyone is sick of the will they, won’t they with the fed,” he said.

On many other economic and fiscal issues, the U.S. faces deep partisan divides, leading to gridlock in Congress. However, the impasse may be thawing, he said.

“Congress is defying conventional wisdom in extraordinary ways,” Valliere said. “For one thing, they’ve gotten a lot done this year. They passed a landmark trade bill, they funded homeland security, they passed a doc fix (Medicare reform), we had the debt ceiling raised until spring of 2017. They lifted the spending cap, so we’re not going to see a crisis on the budget. This is a fairly big list of accomplishments.”

Also surprising, he said, was Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s reemergence as a deal-maker in the House, the election of Paul Ryan to House speaker and the Republican Congress’s passage of a budget that raises spending by $118 billion.

“Their own budget caps are going to be violated,” Valliere said. “However, our deficit continues to fall not due to spending restraint, but due to increased (tax) receipts.”

Valliere said the 2016 presidential contest is anybody’s race.

“I love seeing conventional wisdom proved wrong,” Valliere said. “It’s a mind-boggling concept: Both parties are terrified that their front-runners could be their nominees.”

Valliere said that there’s more certainty on the Democratic side, where Hillary Clinton should emerge victorious over Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

“The Democrats aren’t going to nominate a 74-year-old socialist from Brooklyn to the White House,” Valliere said. “Still, if you asked a room full of Democratic strategists, you’d find that almost 15 out of 20 are concerned about Hillary Clinton as a general election candidate” due to concerns over her poll numbers and fear of a possible prosecution stemming from an investigation of her personal e-mails by the FBI.

On the Republican side of the aisle, however, the picture is muddled. Valliere said that  front-runners Donald Trump and Benjamin Carson are unlikely to emerge as nominees.

“What usually happens on the GOP side is a primary in two phases,” Valliere said. “Act one is the venting. ... Voters are angry, they hate Washington and they love outsiders. That’s where we are now. Act two begins on February 1 in the Iowa caucus and then speeds up as the primary season proceeds, and the focus is different: It’s on temperament. Republican voters are going to ask themselves if they’re comfortable if Trump has his finger on the button.”

That, he said, leaves the nomination up for grabs between five mainstream Republican candidates: Chris Christie, John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

“This could go to the convention and we could see a brokered convention,” Valliere said. “There could also be a third-party candidate. If the general election ends up between Hillary and Bush, it would be the lowest turnout ever.”

Valliere said faulty measuring tools cloud our view of the current poltical climate.

“I think there’s a crisis in the polling industry,” Valliere said. “I don’t believe in polls anymore; there are serious problems with methodology.”

Valliere’s criticism of the polling industry comes one week after Kentucky voted Republican Matt Bevin to its governorship by a 9-point margin after he trailed Democrat Jack Conway in the polls leading up to the election day.