Sabato Downgrades GA to Leans GOP, Continues to Predict Republican Presidential Slaughter
Hillary Clinton still has 347 Electoral College votes, the same as in Sabato’s first Crystal Ball prediction, but he moved Georgia and Arizona to Leans Republican from Likely Republican.
Sabato writes:
Both states typically vote several points more Republican than the nation, but they are both becoming more diverse…Georgia has a significant and deeply Democratic bloc of African-American voters as well as a growing, educated, white-collar professional class that might be turned off by Trump. While Trump is still a favorite in both places, we see Clinton having the potential to grab one or both if she ends up winning a big national victory, so we’re moving Arizona and Georgia from Likely Republican to Leans Republican.
While Sabato consistently has near-perfect accuracy in his across-the-board picks, I still don’t think Georgia is going to vote blue any time soon. President Obama got Democrats sort-of close but Hillary is no Obama. Moreover, minority voters make up a pitifully low percentage of registered voters so I just don’t know where the new Democratic voters are coming from. And for nearly 20 years (!) I’ve heard that Georgia is just a few years away from flipping thanks to minority voters.
So what say you, GAPol aficionados?
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Where are all of the Trump defenders? Is there anyone that would like to debate the path to victory for Trump.
One of Trump’s biggest problems is a lack of surrogates. IIRC, Deal and Isakson originally said they were going to be at the Fox, then they weren’t. Trump’s lone endorsed candidate lost.
It’s similar to why there was no Sanders revolution–there’s no one running to be part of his platform or ticket.
Endorsing Trump is akin to getting a neck tattoo. Seems real edgy and provocative at first but soon you just look like another loser fool with no self respect and no real thought of consequences.
Brilliant comparison.
Bruce LeVell sounded pretty confident at last night’s Atlanta YR Debate. Start watching at 5:00 to miss announcements.
I listened to every word Bruce said in the video. I know Bruce very well and like him. He said nothing that changes my mind on Trump.
Bruce said, “Just watch. After Cleveland he’s going to come around. We are going to be fine.” Those are just words. I need to see Trump “coming around.” Why do we have to wait until after Cleveland for Trump to clean up his act? We are losing today and it’s only going to get worst. He cannot wait until after Cleveland.
What wasn’t addressed was the fact Romney lost women voters by 14 points and Trump is consistently losing women voters by 20 or even 30 points in the most recent polls. What is he going to do to turn that around? What is there plan to show people that he isn’t a misogynist. My wife is arguably more conservative than me. We met at a republican event and go to election night parties for fun. We are weird I know, but she may very well vote for Hillary becasue Trump is such a horrible candidate and just an all around POS. If you are a Trump supporter and think everything is all fine and good when it comes to women voters you are blind or dumb. Or both. Her most recent ads are clearly targeting people like my wife. Women who are republicans are lean republican, but cant stomach Trump.
https://youtu.be/d1rrbXSbu28
The only thing that Bruce said that I honestly agree with was his statements on referring to minorities. Do not refer to people of color as minorities, but as diversity. Sure, I agree with that and I’m always embarrassed when I attend a GOP event and some old white dude asks the lone Hispanic or African American to stand up. Like they are some type of side show. Just like Trump did when he said “hey, look there. There’s my African American.” What a joke.
Bruce was chastising republicans with how we approach nonwhite voters yet he has defended Trump’s outright racists remarks.
It’s weird that I enjoy something you post, Eiger. But this I like…
http://nypost.com/2016/04/22/virginia-is-letting-felons-vote-in-the-presidential-election/
Wonder who will get these 200,000 votes in VA ?
Hillary has promised something to everybody and will cover the super rich with avenues to lower their exposure and bury the middle class workers. At the same time making the working poor and deadbeat poor a sustainable lifestyle.
How else can you spend your life in public service and have a net worth of hundreds of millions ?
Hillary is Safe, Establishment, Partisan and totally bought and paid for. Republicans should love that.
Clinton now leading in Arizona. John McCain will be the biggest lost on election night. His political career will end becasue Trump is at the top of the ticket. Pretty sad.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/polls/284634-poll-clinton-leads-trump-in-deep-red-arizona
Ugh.
No question the Electoral College math has favored the Democrats since 1992. In the last 6 presidential elections, 18 states and DC (with a combined 242 electoral votes) have voted Democratic in every presidential election, and another 3 states (Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico) have voted Democratic 5 of the last 6 presidential elections (each voted for Bush Jr. in either 2000 or 2004). If Hillary wins those 21 states and adds Democratic-trending Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, it is game over—even if Trump wins Florida and Ohio. Virginia has been moving in a Democratic direction slowly in the last 20 or so years, and Northern Virginia, home to about a third of the state’s voters, split about evenly in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 presidential contests but narrowly backed Kerry in 2004 and then easily (about 3-2 margin each time) backed Obama in 2008 and 2012. Some of the areas of the state where the GOP fares best–coal-mining southwest Virginia and rural southside Virginia, either are losing population or growing slowly compared to NOVA.
Pennsylvania has been an elusive target for Republicans for decades. The last time it voted GOP for president was in 1988, and even then Bush Sr. got a mere 51% in the state. Only once since then (2004) has a Republican candidate come within 200,000 votes of winning there. Generally there isn’t much growth in that state, but to the extent there is, it tends to be in the Philadelphia area, which even with its suburbs included votes heavily Democratic. A lot of the interior part of that state that votes heavily Republican is sparsely populated. It isn’t impossible for Trump to win there, but he would have to cut significantly into the Democratic margin in Philly to have a chance.
As for Georgia, it would probably require some Libertarian voting in the 3-5% range and significant defections from GOP moderate women to give Clinton a chance here. She would have to do more than just break even in the 29-county metro Atlanta area (which is basically what Obama did here 4 years ago)—she would have to win fairly big in Atlanta to offset the likely big rural vote for Trump. And while the rural vote certainly is diminishing as a percentage of the state’s total votes over time, it still matters….just ask Roy Barnes if you have any doubts.
A military disaster has the presence of two or three factors, in order of importance:
1. chronic mission failure
2. successful enemy action,
3. total degeneration of a force’s command and control structure
The GOP has been incredibly repetitive on 1 & 3.
And to add some Robert Frost:
“How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?”
What I find most interesting about this prediction is that there is not a single state that is considered a toss up at this point. If you take the “safe D” + “likely D” plus VA, FL and NV and you are already at 275. Trump isn’t winning any of those states. NOVA makes Virginia blue in a presidential year fairly handily. The most recent poll out of FL has Clinton +9 and Nevada, on top of trending democratic overall is also a state with a high mormon population who have no appetite for Trump and won’t be voting republican this year.
The Electoral College votes of a state should really not be winner-take-all. This would be my opinion regardless of the current map shades.
Instead of the false hope of a Democrat AG Lynch indicting Mrs. Clinton perhaps the GOP should find a reason to indict Trump, for anything.
There’s more than just gerrymandering to consider concerning EC votes being awarded by Congressional District. Packing / gerrymandering are indeed significant. Large urban areas are generally more Democratic than rural areas are Republican, which would result in a bit of natural packing even if politicians weren’t picking constituents.
I agree with Andrew’s point on gerrymandering—that would be virtually impossible to avoid in such a system (that is, awarding electoral college votes by congressional district). You would end up in a lot of instances with the statewide winner getting less electoral votes than the statewide loser. This goes a way back, but in 1992, Bush senior won 8 of Georgia’s then-existing congressional districts but still lost statewide to Clinton. How could that be? The black vote was packed into 3 majority-black districts (Bishop, Lewis and Cynthia McKinney), allowing Bush to win the other 8 districts even with Perot costing him a lot of votes here. Thus under a CD system, Bush would have won 8 of the state’s then-existing 13 electoral votes, even while losing the state to Clinton. A lot more recently–2012—Obama won Pennsylvania by about 300,000 votes, but carried just 5 of the state’s 18 districts. There under CD allocation, Romney would have won 13 electoral votes to just 7 for Obama. Or Ohio–Romney won 12 of the 16 districts there last time, even while losing the state by 3 points. (One district in Cleveland gave Obama 83% of the vote.) But heck, Democrats might not mind scrapping the Electoral College and going with national popular vote totals—they have won the national popular vote total 5 of the last 6 elections, and with huge margins in California (+3 million Obama last time) and New York state (+2 million margin), Republicans would be hard=pressed to overcome those by jacking up the vote in North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas and other small reliably Republican states.
They are conducting polling in Utah (and some are tied). That alone should show what a disaster Trump will inflict upon republicans
Thanks for the stat analysis. Add to that the strong support from national Democrats and political pundits who figured the two family names at the top of Georgia’s ticket made us a toss-up state. But even with incumbent Obama and good campaigns by both candidates, both Nunn and Carter got beaten handily. I doubt that anti-Trump folks will peel the entrenched red off of our state only four years later.