The Cook Political Report is one of the most respected and accurate of all the so-called election “forecasters.” And with Donald Trump now the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, they have updated their projection for what will happen if Trump faces a Democratic opponent in the November general election.
The news is indeed dire for the GOP. Based on based on “publicly available polling, data on demographic change and private discussions with a large number of pollsters in both parties,” Cook has now shifted several states from toss-up to Democratic. Those states include Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Arizona and Georgia are also now in play with Trump as the GOP nominee.
Here’s the map posted by Cook:
In this scenario, Clinton would win the election with 304 electoral votes. Only 270 are needed for victory. And other polls suggest the margin for the Democratic nominee could be even larger. The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics adds Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, and North Carolina to the Democratic camp for a total of 347 delegates to Trump’s 191. Other polls have shown that longtime GOP strongholds such as Mississippi and Utah would also be in play, and should the Democrat win those, we would indeed be looking at a landslide of historic proportions.
Clearly, the ascent of Trump has been a gigantic failure for Republicans. Trump may like to say that he brought millions of new voters into the process during the primaries, but those were primaries against a group of what turned out to be sub par competitors. If Trump thinks he has a chance against Clinton or Sanders, then he truly is as delusional as we’ve all suspected.
But nothing can be taken for granted, no matter how rosy the picture may appear. It is up to each and every single one of us to organize, register, and vote in November. We cannot be complacent. Too much is at stake for us to relax.
Featured Image Via Wikimedia available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
