In the 2012 presidential election, the joke was that Mitt Romney spent $1 billion to flip North Carolina to the Republicans.
In 2016, Donald Trump has barely received a dime so far. And the electoral map hasn’t budged.
Factoring in toss-up states, FiveThirtyEight’s initial projection of the general election gives Hillary Clinton 332 electoral votes and Trump 206. The lightest-shaded states are “leaners” within five percentage points, the medium-shaded states are between six and ten points, and the darkest states have an expected margin of 11 points or higher.
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This forecast takes polls, historical data and economic factors into account. If the map looks familiar, it’s because the final electoral college result is identical to what it was in 2012: Barack Obama with 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206.
FiveThirtyEight’s “polls only” projection is less kind to Trump, giving North Carolina and Arizona to Clinton. That would make the final margin 358-180—barely different from the 365-173 drubbing Obama gave John McCain in 2008.
Other election prognostications for this year look similar. The Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report has Clinton at that 2012 mark of 332, with—surprise—North Carolina listed as the only pure toss-up state. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which was updated last Thursday, currently predicts 347 electoral votes for Clinton and 191 for Trump.
There are two surprising takeaways from this. One, Trump’s historically negative public image is conceivably enough to sink his poll standing and electoral potential to rare lows. Yet his candidacy, for all its controversy, doesn’t seem to have altered the country much state-by-state. There are far more dissimilarities between Mitt Romney and Donald Trump than there are between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But according to multiple forecasts, 2016 bears a resemblance to 2012.
Two, Trump is expected to realign the electorate somehow. Maybe it will manifest in him marshaling an army of blue-collar whites to his side. Maybe it will be turning off minority voters in record numbers. Maybe it will be both. If we see any signs of the first change, states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and (optimistically for Trump) Michigan would tilt his way at least a bit. But there haven’t been many signs of that so far, with only Pennsylvania appearing to be a pick-up opportunity. If we see any signs of him driving away minorities, states like Georgia and Arizona would drift from Republicans—and FiveThirtyEight does detect a hint of that.
Overall, though, the view four months before voting is that one of the most unappealing, volatile match-ups for the presidency we’ve seen looks utterly normal in the context of recent elections. Ponder that one while considering the level of polarization in the United States.
