Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said he thinks 12 states will determine the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
When challenged by CNBC about his efforts to broaden his appeal beyond Wisconsin, the governor dismissed the notion that he could not win the White House with the same coalition of mostly white voters that he rode to victory in Madison. Walker explained his plan to take back Washington, D.C., involved imitating his gubernatorial campaigns in Wisconsin.
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“Nobody hugs Ronald Reagan closer than you do,” CNBC personality John Harwood said to Walker. “He had, in 1980, an electorate that was 88 percent white and so did you in Wisconsin in 2014, I believe. That is not a winning formula nationally because the national electorate is not 88 percent white.”
“The nation as a whole is not going to elect the next president, 12 states are,” Walker interrupted. “Wisconsin is one of them. I’m sitting in another one right now, New Hampshire. And how we’re going to win is in a way similar to how we won Wisconsin.”
Walker did not list the other ten states he thinks will determine the outcome of the presidential election, but has indicated that he will pursue Midwestern voters as a large part of his path to the nomination. Walker has spent much of the time on the campaign trail in Iowa, and unveiled his plan to repeal and replace Obamacare in Minnesota, a state where Public Policy Polling showed him leading the GOP field.
Walker told CNBC that he thinks his track record in Wisconsin as a fighter will help him build support, and said he thinks people make the mistake of believing that fighting among Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C., has angered the American people. Instead, he said people are frustrated with how the two sides’ fighting inhibits their ability to accomplish anything, which he contrasted with his own record in Wisconsin.
In recent days, Walker has shifted the focus of his rhetorical attacks from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to congressional Republican leadership, to fellow GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush. Having watched “outsider” candidates such as Donald Trump and Ben Carson surpass him in national surveys and Iowan polls, Walker has re-oriented his message to appeal to the conservative base voters of the GOP’s early nominating states.
Walker has vented his frustration with GOP leadership in Washington while on the campaign trail, criticized House Speaker John Boehner for calling Texas Sen. Ted Cruz a “jacka–” while on the radio, and pleaded with voters to view him as the “outsider” during an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday morning.
Walker is poised to make the debate stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., later this month, despite having fallen out of the top five candidates ranked by national polling, according to RealClearPolitics’ average of polls.
