GOP makes dubious strike in blue turf

tranged husband Anthony Weiner’s sexting.

Others — including some top Republicans — scoff at that rosy picture.

“I hope somebody has a wellthought-out strategy, but the strategy for going into states where Clinton appears at this point to have a comfortable lead eludes me,” veteran Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who works for Sen. Marco Rubio and a number of other Republican candidates, told The News.

Ayres said a Trump win “would be equivalent to drawing an inside straight in poker” — possible but very unlikely.

Clinton’s team responded to Trump’s new moves with an aggressive defense, launching sixfigure ad buys in Michigan, New Mexico, Virginia and Colorado.

It’s the first time they’ve run any ads in Michigan and New Mexico and the first time in months they’ve spent in the other two states — while pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA has ads running in Wisconsin.

Clinton is heading to Michigan for the first time in weeks on Friday, while top surrogates are fanning out across those other states, a sign she’s shifted to protecting leads in her own must-win states rather than expanding the map.

A number of Democrats agree that the race has tightened some, though various internal polls show Clinton has lost just one or two points to Trump in key states following the FBI news. But they remain confident that Clinton will be fine.

“Part of why I feel good about this race is there’s not an easy path for Trump,” said Democratic analytics and polling expert John Hagner, who is working on races in many key states. “Even if you give him Iowa, Ohio, and then Florida, North Carolina and Nevada, the last three of which I’d strongly dispute, he still has to win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia or Colorado, and there’s zero evidence any of those four are competitive.”

Trump must win every state Mitt Romney carried in 2012, as well as large battleground states where President Obama pulled out narrow victories that year, a tall task.

If he holds onto Arizona and Utah, two Romney states where Trump has looked shaky, and wins Iowa and Ohio, his best swing states for months, Trump then needs to pull off victories in North Carolina and Florida.

Polling and early voting shows a dogfight in both states, and Clinton is going all-in to win there.