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Except he only really appeals to male white working class voters. He barely edges out with female working class voters and is far behind in voters with a college degree. That's not including his weaknesses with blacks, asians, latinos, and women.You can't win the election by relying on only one slice of the electorate. If Trump is going to win he is going to have to appeal to groups outside of that.
In 2004 Obama won by about 5.5% and a few of those years the Democrats were up almost 10%, is that really that close? The closest the Republicans got was about 2.5%, which I do consider close, but that only happened once. Anything could happen, but I don't see Pennsylavania going Republican. The polls have been close, but Tump only won one poll that I know of, and that was by a measly 1%.
Considering historical voting records and the polls, the Republicans definitely have an uphill battle to fight. Also consider the DNC will be in Philadelphia.
Hillary Clinton is fairly popular among blue collar workers, and that's the group Trump claims he can win over. I'm not sure about that. But Hillary did very well with that group when facing off against Obama.
I won't even factor in 2000 since he actually lost the popular vote that year. Bush didn't simply rely on only white working class men to win. He did well among white working class women and white voters with college degrees as well Both those demographics Trump does poorly with by comparison. Bush also did very well among minorities in 2004 compared to the last two elections. So far polling shows Trump doing pretty much the same as Romney with white voters though and doing worse or as best no better among minorities than Romney did. If Trump is going to win he is going to have to make inroads with white voters outside of working class males. Otherwise he will go down in defeat.
Pennsylvania is the GOP's great white whale. "By golly, we're gonna finally gonna pick it off this time!" ('this time' being every Presidential election)
The problem with flipping Pennsylvania is that it has one of the smallest blocs of swing voters. A larger portion of Keystone state voters come already baked in to either the Democratic or Republican Presidential candidate than in most states. And of those, more of them are Democrats.
That's why even the most successful Republican Presidential candidate of the last quarter century, that of George W. Bush in 2004, still fell 2.5% short in Pennsylvania. And to show just what it takes for a Republican Presidential candidate to win in Pennsylvania, look at the last one to do so. In 1988, George H.W. Bush carried Pennsylvania by a narrow 2.3% margin - while winning the election by a electoral landslide and a national popular vote margin of 7.7%.
Basically, for a Republican to pick off Pennsylvania, he has to win the national popular vote by more than 5%.
Good luck with that!
PS:
Republicans, please ignore all of this and nonetheless squander lots of time, effort and money in a futile attempt to win Pennsylvania!
No. PA is a supposed swing state every cycle. Every cycle PA is comfortably blue.
Exactly right.
I am a Pennsylvanian and cannot understand how anyone thinks Donald Trump has even a remote chance of winning here.
Pennsylvania is NOT a "swing state."
A Republican presidential candidate has not carried Pennsylvania since 1988.
There are more registered Democrats in PA than Republicans.
Some formally Republican-leaning counties have flipped over to the Democrats.
Just in the last election the Democrats elected a Democrat for governor over an incumbent Republican, and three state Supreme Court seats were up for grabs and the Democrats swept all three.
Demographic changes favoring the Democrats - such as an increase in Hispanic and Asian-American voters cannot be dismissed.
Trump would be wise to concentrate on a real "swing state."
PA is not a strong Democratic state, but it isn't a swing state either. It is a Democratic leaning state, and will stay that way.
Much of the western part of the state (especially once you get outside of Pittsburgh and its immediate suburbs) have trended heavily towards the GOP in recent years. It has a large white working class population and Trump should do quite well there. However, the well educated middle to upper middle class voters in suburban Philly (which use to be the base of the GOP in the state) have trended heavily Democratic, and Trump certainly is going to do quite poorly in areas such as Montgomery County.
The suburban Philly vote cancels out any gains the GOP has had (and Trump will continue) with the white working class vote in the state.
PA is not a strong Democratic state, but it isn't a swing state either. It is a Democratic leaning state, and will stay that way.
CNN agrees with your categorization.
When DJT secured the nomination in May, CNN listed 13 states in the middle. That includes the 11 states that Obama won that DJT said he would campaign in, including PA and MI that "lean Democrat". It only included 2 states that Romney won that "lean Republican". When DJT announced the 17 states that he would campaign in, he added four more states that voted against Obama that he feels needed shoring up.
Solid Democratic:
California (55), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), DC (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New Jersey (14), New York (29), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12), Minnesota (10), New Mexico (5) (201 total)
Bush outperformed other republicans among black voters, did well among Hispanics and did well among educated voters. It was a big boast for many Rs that he did so well with those who held college degrees.
The trick for Rs is to come close with Hispanics and pull in the mid to low teens with AA voters. They don't need to win them just keep it respectable. Conversely, Ds do not win national elections based on the white vote but if they do not at least keep it even among white women they will lose. Lately the white vote chasm has been between married white woman voting R and single white women voting D by a yawning margin.
I think Bush has become the anti-Kennedy. If everyone who supposedly voted for Kennedy had he would not have won by only the narrowest possible margin. And if everyone against Bush actually voted that way he could not have won- at least not the second time.
The trick for Rs is to come close with Hispanics and pull in the mid to low teens with AA voters. They don't need to win them just keep it respectable. Conversely, Ds do not win national elections based on the white vote but if they do not at least keep it even among white women they will lose. Lately the white vote chasm has been between married white woman voting R and single white women voting D by a yawning margin.
Correct. The problem for the GOP is that they are nowhere near doing all of that now and for the last 2 presidential elections.
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