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Thursday, June 2, 2016

"... Trump could succumb, in part, to the very conventional problem that doomed Romney in 2012: Demographics." Not enough "angry white males"!

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COMMENTS: 
*  The Trump University scam's problem was that it drifted over from the normally shady but legal world of real estate flipping into outright fraud.
*  Together, Donald and Newt would form the 'Henry VIII ticket'. Both men are married to their third wives, forming an impressive total of six spouses between them. 
    *  Republican are the party of family values which is why they have so many of them.
*  "Obviously Trump should not be underestimated..."  Just as obvious, Trump's schtick should be overestimated.
    *  Obviously, deep rooted racism in this country should not be underestimated.
*  Trump depends on turning out Angry White Males.  Forgetting that there are lots of angry non-white males and females out there who are angry at what trump is selling.   Apparently only males are allowed to be angry.
*  Correct. He's exceeding expectations there by a wide margin.  Why would ANY woman (trolls and opportunists aside) support that guy? Especially when he's running against a woman?
*  Women aren't immune to lies, racism, or paranoia.
*  Seems to be the case that any woman who raises her voice above purring sound is "shouting" in Trump's world. He definitely isn't going to like the roar of tens of millions of us on November 8.
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Can Trump ride white anger into the White House? A new analysis suggests it’s a fantasy.
By Greg Sargent, June 2, 2016

THE MORNING PLUM:

A new analysis published this morning by FiveThirtyEight’s Dave Wasserman casts still more doubt on one of the most cherished narratives of the 2016 cycle: That Donald Trump might, just might, be able to surprise all of us and win the White House by activating millions of anxiety-ridden missing white voters with his bluster, bigotry, and all around bigness.

Wasserman’s analysis looks at this question in a new way: He asks what might happen if Trump actually did succeed in activating these missing white voters. The baseline for this is the 1992 campaign, which is the last time the white share of the national vote actually did go up, defying a trend that has shown that demographic’s vote share steadily ticking down since 1980. The parallel to the present is clear: Billionaire Ross Perot activated these missing whites during that year by railing against unfair trade deals and promising to restore American greatness.

That’s what Trump is doing, only he’s going even further: he’s also promising to deport millions of illegal immigrants and to ban Muslims from entry into the U.S., both of which seem designed to further maximize his chances of riding white backlash into the White House. Can it work?

Wasserman ran a simulation designed to calculate what would happen in 2016, relative to 2012, if whites turned out at the same rate they did in 1992, while assuming that the vote shares of every other group remain constant. The good news for Trump: This really could theoretically bring in some nine million additional white voters, which could be enough for him to win the national popular vote (again, assuming that everything else remained consistent with 2012).

But here’s the catch: Wasserman finds, remarkably, that “these ‘missing’ white voters disproportionately live in states that won’t matter in a close presidential race.” In only three battleground states — Florida, Ohio, and Nevada — would full activation of these “missing” white voters be enough to potentially make a difference. But even in Ohio and Nevada, Trump would still have to win whites by overwhelming margins to overcome Obama’s 2012 edge in those states.

Two important points on top of this: All of this assumes that Trump will perform as well among nonwhites and college educated whites as Mitt Romney did, an assumption that is extremely generous to Trump. And meanwhile, demographics continue to shift against Republicans:
There are two other huge reasons why focusing exclusively on “missing” white voters fails to capture the magnitude Trump’s challenge in 2016.

First, the nonwhite share of eligible voters has grown since 2012, forcing Trump to activate even more white voters just to keep up. The nonwhite share of the citizen voting age population grew from 29 percent in 2012 to 30 percent in 2014. At that rate, it’s on pace to be 31 percent in 2016. Although African-American turnout could decline without Obama on the ballot, traditionally weak Latino turnout could surge thanks to antipathy towards Trump. Just 48 percent of eligible Latinos cast ballots in 2012, and according to the Pew Research Center, the number of Latinos eligible to vote will increase from 23.3 million in 2012 to 27.3 million in 2016.

Second, there is no guarantee Trump will perform as well as past Republican nominees among existing white voters. In particular, Trump seems to be underperforming with white college-educated voters, who already turn out at extremely high levels.
“In most battleground states, Trump would need to activate far more working-class whites than Perot did to win,” Wasserman concludes.”Trump would require truly historic levels of support and turnout among working-class whites — in addition to avoiding erosion with other groups — to be within range of winning.” Demographics expert Ruy Teixeira’s numbers suggest something similar.

And as Teixeira also points out, some of the steps that Trump is taking to maximize white turnout, particularly blue collar white turnout — such as vowing mass deportations — could actually drive up turnout among nonwhites, offsetting any advantage Trump gains with white voters.

Obviously Trump should not be underestimated, and this will still be a tough campaign. But that’s because these elections always are tough in a divided country. There is a tendency to ascribe quasi-magical political powers to Trump, based on the idea that he is running an “unconventional” and “unpredictable” campaign that supposedly “scrambles ideological boundaries.” But it remains very possible that Trump could succumb, in part, to the very conventional problem that doomed Romney in 2012: Demographics. Indeed, it’s even possible that the very things that lead some observers to ascribe Trump these magical powers could make that conventional problem worse for him.
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