Trump’s fate may turn on margins
Small electoral shifts could be key
Donald Trump calls his presidential campaign a mass movement, but he must show he can coax enough support from voters who twice delivered the White House to Barack Obama.
The billionaire businessman depended almost exclusively on conservative and GOP-leaning whites — a majority of them men — to secure the Republican nomination. Now he must look ahead to a more diverse voting population in his likely general-election matchup with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
His ability to seize on marginal shifts in the electorate may determine whether he can pull off the victory. This challenge is perhaps best evident in Florida, a culturally, racially and ideologically varied state where Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney four years ago by fewer than 75,000 votes out of more than 8.4 million cast.
That means small shifts in the electorate could make a difference — from turnout changes among white, small-town Republicans or urban, nonwhite Democrats to partisans, embittered by contentious nominating bouts, choosing third-party candidates or declining to vote at all. If Trump can’t close the gaps in Florida, he has little shot of winning Rust Belt and Great Lakes states where Obama’s advantages were greater.
Former primary rival Sen. Marco Rubio said Trump can win Florida as long as he can “continue to be Donald.” That brash outsider pitch has sewn up support from white men such as Frank Papa, a retired grocery manager in Clearwater. Papa, a New Jersey native, says Trump “speaks my language, talks and thinks like me.”
Trump gives lip service to the electorate’s diversity, suggesting “the Mexican people” will “vote for me like crazy” and that he can win 25 percent of African-Americans. The highest won by any GOP nominee since 1980 is about 12 percent. He said recently that he could lure “40 percent” of voters backing Clinton’s primary opponent, Bernie Sanders.
Some nonwhite Floridians mock Trump’s claims about his own appeal. “I haven’t heard any of my (black) friends say they’ll vote for Trump,” said Tanisha Winns, 39, a black Democrat in Lakeland. “If anything, I’m hearing my white friends say they won’t.”
Florida polls suggest Trump and Clinton are running about even, with about 15 percent undecided. But there are variables that should give Trump pause.
In 2012, nonwhites accounted for almost a third of all votes cast in Florida, compared to 28 percent nationwide. But population growth, driven by Hispanics, suggests both numbers could be higher come November.
Obama beat Romney with Florida’s black vote with 95 percent. The president won Hispanics by a 60-40 margin, closer than his 71-27 advantage nationally, with many of Florida’s conservative Cuban-American voters accounting for the difference. Those numbers still left Romney too reliant on whites. He managed 61 percent of Florida’s white vote but needed closer to 63 percent to win the Sunshine State.
Demographers and pollsters say Trump likely would have to push into the mid to high 60s with whites — a level no candidate has reached since Ronald Reagan in 1984 — to have a chance nationally. That’s even more daunting considering an AP-GfK poll in April that found two out of three white women view Trump negatively.
To be sure, Clinton must shore up her Democratic base. Jennifer Perelman, a Sanders supporter, says she won’t back Clinton. But she won’t vote for Trump, either. Her plan: to vote for Sanders as a write-in candidate.