This might be a little down in the weeds, but there’s a politician running on the basis of not being a politician, and it turns out he said some things that no one would have said if they ever planned on being a politician—i.e. chortling over his ability to molest women and get away with it due to being a star, things like that. It’s unclear if anyone heard about it; when I checked online, Fox News did have an article, but it was below the fold, sharing space with an equally-sized box with a headline that said something along the lines of “New photograph evidence of legendary bigfoot?”
Other outlets may have considered it slightly more of a story.
In any case, it’s the sort of thing that might cause a few Republican voters to not just write in a protest vote, but actually switch sides. So here’s a look at the current state of the race and what kind of shifts we can expect if there are various degrees of change.
Right at the moment, here’s the RealClearPolitics ‘no toss-ups’ map:
If just 1 percent of Trump voters switch sides (effectively a 2 percent total swing), then Ohio and Arizona switch sides, for a 351-187 major victory. This might have already happened before the latest comments from Trump, as Hillary was leading in the recent polls I saw from both states. If you like 538’s model, then that brings in Nebraska’s second district as well, plus Maine’s second district (and their model already sees Ohio on the Democratic side).
But that’s just 1 percent. What if it’s more significant than that, and he loses 3 percent of his supporters to Hillary, for a 6 percent total swing? Well, that brings Iowa and Georgia over to the Light Side, and 538 says Missouri would swing at that point too, with Alaska just barely missing the cutoff. At 385-153, the rout is definitely on.
But what if it’s more than that? What if as many as one in 20 of Donald Trump’s supporters discover enough vestigial conscience to abandon him and make sure he stays out of the White House now? That’s 5 percent of his voters switching, for a net 10 percent shift. RCP sees Texas, Indiana, and South Carolina shifting under that scenario, while 538 says that Alaska, Montana, and Kansas would all join the mix too. I’m not all that sure Utah won’t be giving a fair number of votes to someone else, but the polling doesn’t handle that case, so I’ll leave it out. At 455-83, Trump’s basically only got the southern end of the Appalachians, a chunk of the libertarian Rockies, and parts of the Great Plains. To use a broad brush, that’s mostly people who don’t want to live around a lot of other people.
And then we’ll get to the real dream, where either “mainstream” Republicans sit it out to protest Trump, Trump supporters sit it out to protest mainstream Republicans, both, or a whole lot of people find the limits to what they can tolerate and actively change sides. What if there’s a10 percent shift across the board, a full one-tenth of the voting population saying “Nope” and coming over, for a net of 20 percent? Well, that almost takes it all: both Dakotas, Nebraska (except the 3rd District), Utah, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky all make the switch, for a 509-29 bloodbath. Just West Virginia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska’s 3rd District, Wyoming, and Idaho are left to stubbornly hold the flag for Republicans.
Now, I don’t actually suggest these are likely. Even if Trump were to actually declare that he was withdrawing, there’s an awful lot of people who’ve been trained for the last quarter of a century to hate and suspect the Clintons. I know some otherwise reasonable people whose stated opinion on the matter boils down to, “The Republicans wouldn’t have spent so much time accusing them of things if they hadn’t done anything!” So I suspect that no matter what Trump does, he’s got a floor no lower than the high thirties. And just off of my own ideas on it, here are my picks: there’s enough dropoff that Texas and Indiana come into play, and Alaska has actually been seeing a steady increase in Democratic vote percentage since 2000.
437-101. Trump’s behavior is too much for the Midwest, and his anti-Latino speeches plus misogynistic behavior makes Texas viable, but he hangs on to triple digits because there’s a big swath of the South and the interior West that just hates Hillary that much.
Your mileage may vary. All predictions guaranteed [REDACTED].