Trump facing uphill climb to White House
Must shake up electoral map, which now tilts toward Clinton
PHILADELPHIA — The presidential primaries are just about over and the nominees have emerged. And the general election begins with Democrat Hillary Clinton already ahead of Republican Donald Trump on the Road to 270.
Trump, who shook the last of his rivals weeks before Clinton locked up her nomination, has made the GOP’s path to the White House more treacherous by failing to seize on that head start in the race for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
There is a path for the billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star to win. But it’s narrow, given the map’s opening tilt toward the Democratic Party, and hinges on Trump’s ability to continue to defy political norms.
Where does Trump begin? A look at four questions he must answer successfully to beat Clinton:
Can Trump turn out more white voters?
Trump will need to replicate his overwhelming success in the GOP primaries at winning over white voters, but also count on doing even better Nov. 8.
It’s a risky strategy because white, non collegeeducated voters have shrunk as a portion of the overall electorate in recent years. Also, it’s at odds with many Republican leaders, who believe the party’s White House prospects hinge on appealing to the growing number of black and Hispanic voters.
Yet Trump’s campaign is confident he can turn out whites who have not voted in past elections in states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Winning all three would reverse decades of Democratic dominance there. If Trump could win Ohio as well, he would offset potential Clinton victories in Florida, Nevada and Colorado.
Can Trump close the gap with suburban women?
A recent Associated Press-GfK poll found 70 percent of women nationally have unfavorable opinions of Trump. He trailed Clinton by double digits in support from women in a range of polls this spring.
Clinton’s campaign is eager to exploit Trump’s weaknesses with women in the suburbs of contested states: Charlotte, RaleighDurham and Greensboro in North Carolina; northern Virginia; the Denver area; and the counties around several Ohio cities.
Trump’s campaign notes that Clinton faces her own gender gap. “She has a massive deficit with men, worse than his with women,” campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said.
Can Trump boost his standing with minorities?
When Romney lost to Obama in 2012, GOP leaders quickly identified a glaring problem: Romney’s poor performance with black and Hispanic voters. Across the country, he won only 17 percent of the nonwhite vote.
Romney won the support of just 27 percent of Hispanics nationally in a campaign where he backed the idea of “self-deportation.” Trump has gone further, declaring that some Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals, calling for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and pledging to throw out all people living in the U.S. illegally before allowing “the good ones” back in.
More recently, Trump angered his own party’s leaders by raising a federal judge’s Mexican heritage as a reason he might be biased in a legal case. The comments were widely condemned as racist.
African-Americans have never come back to the GOP, and there’s little expectation Trump will change that dynamic. The big question is whether black voters will show up for Clinton in the same record-breaking way they did for Obama, who carried 93 percent in 2012.
Can Trump put new states in play?
Both Trump and Clinton are seeking a holy grail of presidential politics: winning states that long have voted for the opposing party.
For Trump, that means New York and California, two of the three biggest electoral prizes. Republicans haven’t won either since the 1980s, and the contests since haven’t been close. Trump insists he’ll compete aggressively for both.
Clinton recently suggested she could pull off an upset in Texas, a bastion of conservative politics and the second biggest stash of electoral votes. While Texas is becoming more diverse and potentially friendlier to Democrats, even the most optimistic party operatives generally believe the state is years away from becoming competitive in presidential elections.
If Clinton were to flip any traditionally Republican states, Arizona and Georgia appear more likely.