This week the dust is settling from the Republican and Democratic conventions, and the polls are starting to give us a far clearer picture of the state of the 2016 race. Early indications suggest Hillary Clinton will receive a sizable national “polling bump” coming out of the Democrats’ convention, with Republicans having mostly squandered their opportunity on the national stage.
Polling bump or no, for the Trump campaign right now, the only number that should matter is this one: sixty-four. That’s the number of electoral votes Trump needs to flip from Obama states into his own column in order to secure the presidency.
At the moment, with the lack of much fresh, high-quality, state-by-state polling, the race is still something of a mystery, but with that strong Clinton bounce starting to emerge in national polling, it seems Trump still has a very tough path before him.
During the 2012 election, Mitt Romney won 206 electoral votes, while Barack Obama picked up 332. Though Obama won only 51 percent of the popular vote, this pronounced electoral college gap made Obama’s victory seem extremely large.
States like Florida that were decided by a fairly small margin go, of course, in “winner-take-all” fashion. Even a slight polling lead nationally can balloon into a significant electoral college win in this way.
We are still in the midst of the post-convention “bounce” for Team Clinton, but Clinton opening up a national lead of anywhere from five-eight points in the latest polls, which puts Trump in a position where he’s potentially looking at a worse outcome than Romney in 2012.
Trump’s supporters and allies will, of course, claim that Trump is outperforming Romney in a handful of key states. Take, for instance, Trump’s claim that he will sweep through the “Rust Belt” states. In order to get to the 64 votes Trump would need to flip, he’d have to pick up Ohio’s 18 electoral votes, Pennsylvania’s 20, Wisconsin’s 10 and Michigan’s 16.
In Michigan and Wisconsin, no credible poll has yet shown Trump with a lead whatsoever, at any point. In Pennsylvania, only one credible pollster has shown Trump with any lead at all, while a cascade of other polls show Trump behind. Ohio is perhaps the state where the most evidence exists that Trump is very competitive, with four of the most recent polls out of that state showing Trump exactly tied with Clinton.
Unfortunately for Trump, Ohio alone doesn’t get him anywhere close to the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
Then let’s head south, into the more competitive “Sun Belt” blue states like Florida and Nevada. In both states, the polls have been a bit all over the place. Credible pollsters have put Trump anywhere from up by three points in Florida to down by seven, and have shown the race see-saw in Nevada.
Florida’s 29 electoral votes would be a nice if not essential prize for Trump. But in a place like Florida, Democratic voter registration among the rapidly expanding Latino population continues apace, making the road a hard one for Trump, given his exceedingly high unfavorable ratings with this population.
Similarly, while Nevada is a state that was ripe Trump country within the GOP primary season, the Latino population in Nevada, if mobilized, could make this state nearly impossible for Trump to flip.
There’s another major problem Trump must confront: That magic number of 64 assumes that Trump will hold on to each and every state that Mitt Romney won in 2012. Look no further than North Carolina to see a major flaw in that assumption: Trump has not led in a credible public poll in that state since June.
With the recent court rulings striking down North Carolina’s voter ID law, and evidence suggesting that high-profile voter ID debates have encouraged increased African-American turnout in past elections, Trump may actually wind up having to make up North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes elsewhere if that state goes back to being blue.
Before the conventions, Donald Trump was running just a small margin behind Hillary Clinton, and despite this fact, was still behind in most of the states he’d need to swing in order to win. If post-convention we see a Hillary Clinton bump that winds up being a new normal, we may be due for a slew of public polls painting a grim picture for Team Trump.
There will be lots of questions debated about the state of the 2016 race and whether or not Trump has a shot. But ultimately, only one question matters: Can Trump flip the requisite 64 electoral votes he needs to win?
We still need more state polling to know for sure, but at the moment, all signs point to no.
Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for The Washington Examiner and author of “The Selfie Vote.”
