“70% of the White Guy Vote” Needed? Not Really
When will national political websites like Politico understand the Electoral College system? Articles like this one – “Donald Trump Needs 7 of 10 White Guys” on Politico this morning – are so infuriating.
UPDATE: I didn’t realize when writing this that it was authored by David Bernstein, one of the better, slightly left-of-center political writers in the business, who has done a lot of great work in Boston, most notably for the Boston Phoenix and BoMag. He’s just simply wrong here.
Donald Trump doesn’t need “70 percent of the white male vote” … the statistical model doesn’t work that way because the election isn’t based on the national popular vote. Here is the path to victory for Trump – or any other Republican candidate — with caveats, understanding the lousy race Mitt Romney ran in 2012.
Hold Romney States
First, in order for Trump to win, he needs to hold onto Romney’s vote in red states. This is plausible, Democrats can’t win in most of the states.
More Than Obama?
Second, Republicans need to hope that the Democrat’s nominee doesn’t earn more votes than President Barack Obama did in 2012.
This is plausible. Obama received 69.5 million votes in 2008 with John McCain earning 59.9 million; Obama received 62.6 million votes in 2012 with Romney getting 59.1 million. In other word, turnout in 2012 for the major party candidates dropped. While both Obama and Romney lost votes due to lowered turnout, Romney lost 800,000 votes while Obama lost nearly 7 million – in other words, Obama lost NINE TIMES as many votes.
Democrats and indies are not participating in the Dem primaries. There may be the first female nomination dynamic in play though which will probably increase turnout — women voting for the first woman, completely logical. Let’s presume, for this exercise, that the turnout is similar to 2012 not 2008.
How Trump Wins
Republicans need to earn 75,000 more votes in Florida and 105,000 more votes in Ohio than Romney did. Florida is a shoo-in for Trump and probably U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, since it’s his home state. It will be in play.
Ohio is doable for Trump, if he campaigns in every town with a closed factory; Gov. John Kasich, obviously, would probably win there — swing state and home state.
Along with Florida and Ohio, Republicans need to do one of the following:
a) Either win 213,000 more votes in Pennsylvania (possible for Trump, see note about Ohio), or
b) earn 41,000 more votes in New Hampshire AND 107,000 more votes in Virginia than Romney received (this is also possible and not improbable).
325,000 to 400,000 Votes
This is the math. It’s really very simple. This is the ENTIRE 2016 election: It’s less than 325,000-400,000 votes in five key states — not an increase of millions of more white male voters than W. received as Bernstein’s surmises in his piece. In fact, had ORCA not collapsed — or they backed up their data in Excel or on paper — or the Romney effort had a populist VP pick (I have been contending that Paul Ryan was a terrible pick and brought nothing to the ticket as far as strategy goes), we wouldn’t be speaking about Trump at all – we would be talking about President Romney’s re-election effort right now.
Add in the fact that the Republican primaries are breaking nearly every turnout record on the history books and the presumptions are pretty clear. Add in the tens of thousands of new voters that don’t vote or will cast eff-u/celebrity votes if Trump is the nominee, and that’s it. Does anyone REALLY believe that so-and-so GOP governor from wherever is going to blank a Trump-Who Knows 2016 ticket against Hillary? Never.
These political sites, instead of encouraging long, nonsensical opuses, created to, really, freak everyone out, should sit down and learn their history and simple mathematics.
And what happened to all that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” or does that only apply for refugees brought to the United States that haven’t been vetted and MIGHT bring a potential terror threat but not a Republican candidate who has built a $10 billion company and is promising to end wretched trade deals and put Americans back to work? Funny how this is always the case, isn’t it? SMH…
