https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...lem-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-donald-trump/
Republicans have a massive electoral map problem that has nothing to do with Donald Trump
By Chris Cillizza
The Fix
May 2
How Donald Trump won Indiana, in 60 seconds
Embed Copy Share
Play Video1:00
Donald Trump won a sweeping victory in the Indiana Republican primary. Here's how. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
Politico reported today on a Florida poll conducted for a business group in the state that shows Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump by 13 points and Ted Cruz by nine.
Why is that important? Because if Clinton wins Florida and carries the 19 states (plus D.C.) that have voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in each of the last six elections, she will be the 45th president. It's that simple.
Here's what that map would look like:
And here's the underlying math. If Clinton wins the 19 states (and D.C.) that every Democratic nominee has won from 1992 to 2012, she has 242 electoral votes. Add Florida's 29 and you get 271. Game over.
The Republican map — whether with Trump, Cruz or the ideal Republican nominee (Paul Ryan?) as the standard-bearer — is decidedly less friendly. There are 13 states that have gone for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. But they only total 102 electorate votes. That means the eventual nominee has to find, at least, 168 more electoral votes to get to 270. Which is a hell of a lot harder than finding 28 electoral votes.
Many Republicans — particularly in Washington — are already preparing to blame a loss this fall, which many of them view as inevitable, on the divisiveness of Trump. That's not entirely fair to Trump, though.
While his dismal numbers among women and Hispanics, to name two groups, don't help matters and could — in a worst-case scenario for Republicans — put states such as Arizona and even Utah in play for Democrats, the map problems that face the GOP have very, very little to do with Trump or even Cruz.
[[URL='http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/these-10-states-will-decide-whether-trump-is-the-gop-nominee/2016/04/26/5ca6fb10-0c20-11e6-bc53-db634ca94a2a_video.html']VIDEO: These 10 states will decide whether Trump is the GOP nominee]
Instead they are, largely, demographic problems centered on the GOP's inability to win any large swath of nonwhite voters. New Mexico, a state in which almost half the population is Latino, is the ur-example here. In 2004, George W. Bush won the Land of Enchantment in his bid for a second term. (His margin over John Kerry was 588 votes.) Eight years later, Barack Obama won the state by 10 points over Mitt Romney; neither side targeted it in any meaningful way.
[/URL]
Republicans have a massive electoral map problem that has nothing to do with Donald Trump
By Chris Cillizza
The Fix
May 2
How Donald Trump won Indiana, in 60 seconds
Embed Copy Share
Play Video1:00
Donald Trump won a sweeping victory in the Indiana Republican primary. Here's how. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
Politico reported today on a Florida poll conducted for a business group in the state that shows Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump by 13 points and Ted Cruz by nine.
Why is that important? Because if Clinton wins Florida and carries the 19 states (plus D.C.) that have voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in each of the last six elections, she will be the 45th president. It's that simple.
Here's what that map would look like:
And here's the underlying math. If Clinton wins the 19 states (and D.C.) that every Democratic nominee has won from 1992 to 2012, she has 242 electoral votes. Add Florida's 29 and you get 271. Game over.
The Republican map — whether with Trump, Cruz or the ideal Republican nominee (Paul Ryan?) as the standard-bearer — is decidedly less friendly. There are 13 states that have gone for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. But they only total 102 electorate votes. That means the eventual nominee has to find, at least, 168 more electoral votes to get to 270. Which is a hell of a lot harder than finding 28 electoral votes.
Many Republicans — particularly in Washington — are already preparing to blame a loss this fall, which many of them view as inevitable, on the divisiveness of Trump. That's not entirely fair to Trump, though.
While his dismal numbers among women and Hispanics, to name two groups, don't help matters and could — in a worst-case scenario for Republicans — put states such as Arizona and even Utah in play for Democrats, the map problems that face the GOP have very, very little to do with Trump or even Cruz.
[[URL='http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/these-10-states-will-decide-whether-trump-is-the-gop-nominee/2016/04/26/5ca6fb10-0c20-11e6-bc53-db634ca94a2a_video.html']VIDEO: These 10 states will decide whether Trump is the GOP nominee]
Instead they are, largely, demographic problems centered on the GOP's inability to win any large swath of nonwhite voters. New Mexico, a state in which almost half the population is Latino, is the ur-example here. In 2004, George W. Bush won the Land of Enchantment in his bid for a second term. (His margin over John Kerry was 588 votes.) Eight years later, Barack Obama won the state by 10 points over Mitt Romney; neither side targeted it in any meaningful way.
[/URL]
