Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is desperate.
He knows that he lost ground to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton after both parties’ conventions were completed. His campaign is well aware of this, and his new campaign manager, KellyAnne Conway, is looking to shore up his polling numbers within certain key voting groups.
This is why we have seen Donald Trump and Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence attempt to reach out to the African-American and Hispanic communities over the past couple of weeks.
What many of us don’t realize is that their intentions for reaching out are extremely suspect. Trump’s campaign recognizes that the likelihood of these voting groups giving him a ton of support is very low. But he is continuing to reach out to them in order to show suburban whites with college degrees that he does not hold racist views. This group of people typically votes Republican, but they do not want to vote for a man who is viewed by many to be a racist and a bigot.
Trump’s campaign is vigorously trying to change this prejudiced perception of him. They have had Trump address issues facing the African-American community during speeches he has given in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, and Florida. This outreach continued on Thursday where black and Latino leaders met with Donald Trump at Trump Towers.
Donald’s lack of support with white people is glaringly obvious when you compare his polling numbers to those of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. According to national exit polling data, Romney won the vote of white women by 14 percentage points over current President Barack Obama. In the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released this month, Trump is down one percentage point to Clinton in the same category.
Romney also won the vote of white men by 27 percentage points over Obama. Trump was expected to improve upon Romney’s success, but he is only winning by 13 percentage points. Keep in mind that Romney still lost the presidential election by four percentage points with his higher numbers.
So if Donald Trump is doing worse than Mitt Romney with non-white minority groups, white women, and white men, it will be nearly impossible for him to win the November election.
Even factoring in education does not bode well for the Trump campaign. Clinton has a 20 point lead with white women who have college degrees. White people without a degree favor Trump who carries 59 percent of the vote. However, exit polling shows that Romney won 61 percent of this voting bloc, suggesting that Trump is not even matching the numbers that he is expected to get.
He may not be able to grab a significant portion of the minority vote, but he certainly needs to work on his popularity with the white population, which is believed to be his main constituency. Republican pollster Whit Ayres talked to the Washington Post about Trump’s need to consolidate his base. He said:
“After 15 months of denigrating every nonwhite minority in sight, it’s hard to believe that he can actually do significantly better among nonwhites. But he may be able to soften his image a bit with some Republican and maybe a few independent whites who have been put off by his harshness thus far.”
He better. Or else he’ll be on the receiving end of an ass whooping from Hillary Clinton come November.
Here is a video of Donald Trump courting the African-American vote by telling them they have nothing to lose:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He-VT3k6Xu4
Featured image via screengrab from YouTube video.
