Electoral Map Nightmare Forms For Trump

[Doctor Jack]

Donald J. Trump, confronting a daunting electoral map and a significant financial disadvantage, is preparing to fall back from an expansive national campaign and concentrate the bulk of his time and money on just three or four states that his campaign believes he must sweep in order to win the presidency.

Even as Mr. Trump has ticked up in national polls in recent weeks, senior Republicans say his path to the 270 Electoral College votes needed for election has remained narrow — and may have grown even more precarious. It now looks exceedingly difficult for him to assemble even the barest Electoral College majority without beating Hillary Clinton in a trifecta of the biggest swing states: Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

President Obama won all three states in 2008 and 2012, and no Republican has won Pennsylvania in nearly three decades.

-snip-

For now, though, Mr. Trump is grappling with a magnified version of the dilemma that threatens to stymie Republicans every four years. Democrats have won a consistent set of 18 states in every presidential election since 1992, giving them a base of 242 Electoral College votes even before counting some of the biggest swing states. As a result, the last two Republican nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain, would have needed to capture nearly all the contested states on the map in order to win.

So, despite some tightening in the national polls last month, the electoral vote landscape for Trump has actually gotten weaker. Trump mocked Clinton for spending large amounts of money in swing states but it appears that has solidified her moderate lead in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and Virginia. And with the election just 3 months away, a moderate but solid lead can be a death sentence for Trump's campaign. What makes it even worse is that he still seems to be struggling with even getting any campaign organization off the ground in any of those states. These are tasks that should have been wrapped up 5 or 6 months ago but he still hasn't even really started yet. The problem is that he has no team to register votes, no one encouraging early voting in these states, and no GOTV operation for election day. With none of that present, it could cost him several points in the final tallies. Even if polls on election day show a tie in Ohio, he would probably lose by 3 or 4 points because many of his voters would not show up to vote or would not be registered.

Ever since the Spring, when they reported he was dismantling any ground organizations in states that already voted in the primaries and stated they weren't going to rebuild for the general that he had made a fatal error. Ground game and organization is what makes all the difference. By June, when his campaign said they were going to rely on twitter and Today Show interviews instead of state organizations, it was clear that he had greatly hamstrung his already weak electoral position. And even if they get their shit together right now, its still way too late to compete with the Democratic machine. However, it sounds like they are still a couple of weeks from fully realizing how screwed they really are in these states.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/us/politics/donald-trump-presidential-race.html?_r=0

[liberal N proud]

1. We still have to get people out to vote.

[Doctor Jack]

2. Good news there

Clinton's ground game organization is said to be one of the largest ever. It dwarfs anything that Obama did in 2008 or 2012 and anything that the republicans have ever done.

[uponit7771]

4. +1, we should fight for the house no doubt... at least the senate... choke this nasty culture from..

... the GOP as soon as possible

[abetterkid]

3. Wow! Trump just served himself a huuuuuge shit sandwich.

Thanks for the post.