One of the big arguments for Donald Trump’s prospects as the GOP nominee is that he would “redraw the map.” Trump’s appeal with blue-collar voters is allegedly such that he could ensure victories in rustbelt states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania that have eluded Republican candidates in recent elections. Trump has also been banking on his appeal in his home state of New York and has repeatedly argued he can carry the Empire State in the general election. If Democrats fail to win New York, a viable path to 270 electoral votes would indeed be difficult for their candidate to find.
Well, Trump’s been the presumptive nominee for a few weeks now, and polling results suggest he really has gone a long way toward redrawing the map. His performance has been so bad that some of the biggest Republican strongholds in the country are backing away from him. A recent poll of Utah found Trump garnering 29 percent of the vote, Hillary Clinton at 26 percent, libertarian Gary Johnson at 16 percent, and—this is telling—”other” tied for the lead at 29 percent. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent, so Trump is basically tied with Clinton in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in over 50 years. A June 10 poll of Kansas—another state that hasn’t gone Democratic since 1964—found Hillary beating Trump by seven points. And this in spite of the fact that 44 percent of the poll’s respondents said they were Republican, as opposed to 28 percent being self-identified Democrats. Nonetheless, Trump has hired a pollster to work full-time on winning New York, even though this is a vainglorious waste of resources directed at an unwinnable state.
National polling data is possibly even more disastrous. A Bloomberg poll last week found Trump losing to Hillary by 12 points. In a head-to-head matchup without Gary Johnson, Trump loses to Hillary by 18 points. Keep in mind that Reagan’s landslide victory in 1984 was by just 9 points, so by The Scrapbook’s rough calculations we can expect Hillary Clinton to carry 98 states.
In fact, Trump has failed to break 40 percent support in the last six national polls. (The latest Reuters poll has his support at an oh-the-humanity 32 percent.) Examining the crosstabs of these polls also -offers no obscure data points that can be teased out to paint a rosier picture. The latest Washington Post poll shows that 53 percent of blue-collar white voters have an unfavorable opinion of him. If blue-collar whites don’t like Trump, who, exactly, is supposed to emerge from the woodwork to vault him to victory?
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has launched a huge national ad buy pummeling Trump and is busy campaigning in swing states. The Trump campaign can’t afford a national ad campaign to counter it, so they’re stuck holding rallies in Republican strongholds such as Texas and Georgia so they can piggyback campaign events onto fundraisers. Then again, Georgia is also another red state in danger of flipping because of Trump. The fundraising isn’t going well, either. According to a recent report in Politico, Trump promised RNC chairman Reince Priebus he would call 24 GOP donors. He called three and stopped.
We know it’s still (relatively) early, events happen, things change, and polls are often unreliable. But this is thus far overwhelming evidence of an underwhelming campaign, and nothing about Trump’s performance of late inspires confidence he can right the ship. At a recent rally, Trump went on a tirade against GOP leaders who had been critical of him. “This is too tough to do it alone,” he said. “But . . . I think I’m going to be forced to.” At the rate he’s going, Trump will be going it alone—right into the voting booth.
