Conventional wisdom has long held that if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, he will have his head handed to him in November. But a recent poll out of Florida suggests that even if Trump has the nomination snatched from him at a brokered convention, it won’t be enough to save the GOP.
A recent poll by Associated Industries of Florida, a business lobbying group, shows Hillary Clinton destroying Trump, 49-36. That isn’t a surprise; Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric won’t play well in a state where Hispanics could account for up to 14 percent of the vote. The real surprise is that Hillary beats Ted Cruz by a fairly decisive 48-39 margin.
How significant is this? As we all know, without Florida, a Republican literally has no politically realistic path to 270. But just in case you needed more convincing, Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post crunched the numbers. He found that 19 states, plus the District of Columbia, have gone Democratic in every election since 1992. Any competent Democrat would likely win them all, so Cillizza has Hillary starting out with 242 electoral votes. If you add Florida’s 29 electoral votes–tied with New York for the third-biggest electoral prize–Hillary has 271 electoral votes. That’s all, folks.
Republicans have a massive electoral map problem that has nothing to do with Donald Trump https://t.co/S7qYIsgUOg pic.twitter.com/ibEX6m1nVP
— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) May 3, 2016
Cillizza is being a bit too generous to the GOP. After all, New Hampshire, Iowa, and New Mexico have gone Republican a grand total of one time since 1992, and are likely to go Democratic barring a total collapse. Now you have 257 electoral votes in the blue column–a map that largely corresponds to what a competent Democrat can win under most circumstances. That means Trump or Cruz have to not just take Florida, but every other swing state to get to 270. We all know that realistically, that just isn’t happening.
As Cillizza sees it, the problem for the GOP goes well beyond the increasing likelihood that they are about to nominate a presidential candidate who is morally unfit to be dog catcher. Rather, the GOP simply hasn’t been able to expand its base beyond states that don’t have significant populations of white voters. Any state with a large or growing minority population has taken on a noticeably bluer tint.
As his object examples, Cillizza offers North Carolina and Virginia. Those two states were long part of the GOP’s Southern firewall, and are now swing states by any definition. Without both North Carolina and Virginia, there is no politically realistic route for a Republican to win. Indeed, under my scenario, if a Democrat were to take either North Carolina or Virginia, the ballgame is over.
More on point, there are 13 states that have gone Republican in every election since the Clinton era. The problem is that they account for only 102 electoral votes–and 38 of them come from Texas, which has a large and growing Latino population. Throw in Arizona and Georgia–two large electoral prizes that have gone Democratic only once since 1992, but have large minority populations. It can reasonably be argued that Texas, Georgia, and Arizona are the only reasons the GOP is still in the game electorally. If they turn purple, things suddenly get very dire for the red team.
If this is any indication, even if desperate Republicans manage to draft Paul Ryan, it won’t be enough to save them. Ryan hinted last week on “The Late Show” that he is open to running for president after initially disavowing any interest. Watch here.
But Cillizza thinks this is a wasted effort. He believes that those behind the effort to anoint Ryan as the GOP’s savior operate under the assumption that Ryan would have “a coin-flip chance” in the general election. But from where Cillizza’s sitting, even Ryan would need to pull a rabbit out of his hat to win.
Now we know why the Republicans are resorting to voter-suppression measures. They know that even without Trump, the electoral votes just aren’t there for them to win the White House under normal circumstances. And in all likelihood, they won’t be there any time soon.
Featured image courtesy Chris Cillizza’s Twitter feed
