The chatterers are agog about the polling organization--Quinnipiac--that recently found Trump leading Clinton in Ohio and trailing her, though by a statistically insignificant margin, in Florida and Pennsylvania. So could Trump win?
Maybe I'm just whistling in the dark, but I seriously doubt it. Trump's ballyhooed plan to ride the Rust Belt to the White House may be a symptom of weakness. He needs a plan--right?--and what does not appear to be any part of it seems to me significant. Back in the twentieth century, such western states as Colorado and Nevada were reliably Republican in presidential elections, and New Mexico qualified as a swing state. Obama, however, carried all three of these states, twice. Recapturing them does not look like it's in Trump's plans, and it's not hard to figure out why: the red-to-light blue journey of these states has been fueled largely by the votes of a burgeoning Hispanic population that has an even dimmer view of Trump than it had of Romney.
If one puts the western "battlegrounds" in Clinton's column, what then for Trump? The eastern battlegrounds! The big three have been Virginia, Florida, and Ohio. But Virginia is a long reach. It, too, was carried twice by Obama, and it has a Democratic governor and two Democratic U.S. senators. I believe that the last Republican to win a statewide election in Virginia was Governor Bob McConnell, and the effort to keep him out of prison is a full-time job for teams of lawyers. Virginia's new status as a purple-blue state may be attributed to another growing Democratic demographic--young, hip, well-educated millennials who tend to congregate in and around urban centers, such as northern Virginia within commuting distance of D.C. These are not Trump's people, either.
That leaves Ohio and Florida. Of course Trump plans on winning them. He has to plan on winning somewhere, and they're all that's left! Problem is, put them together with the Romney states, and it's still not enough to win, which is why there is all this buzz about how the poor oppressed white guys of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin--all states that no Republican has won for a generation--are going to put Trump over the top. Quinnipiac suggests, a half year before the voting, that it might be possible, like drawing to an inside straight. But then there are other polls indicating that Trump is not doing very well in some Romney states--North Carolina, for example, and, of all places, Utah [sic]. (It's a mystery to me why Mormons don't like Trump!) Arizona could be a problem for him, too.
There is in nature a powerful force called "reversion to the mean." I think it applies in presidential elections, too. Clinton isn't going to carry Utah. And Trump isn't going to win the election. I hope (and think).
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