CBS’ Will Rahn ponders a hypothetical split between the popular vote and the Electoral College:
However, Liam Donovan, a conservative columnist and former Republican operative, makes a convincing case that the popular vote is also likely beyond Trump’s grasp.
It’s exceedingly rare for a candidate to win the Electoral College but not the popular vote, of course, which is why it’s only happened three times. “But to the extent it’s possible,” Donovan told CBS News, “what you’d need is for Trump to run up the score in ‘garbage time’ within the densely populated blue wall,” especially along the coasts.
Trump would also need to outperform Mitt Romney in big blue states like California and Illinois, but “we don’t see any indication of that happening – if anything, he’s doing a bit worse as the GOP-friendly ‘burbs desert him.”
Trump so far hasn’t made up that deficit with the working class white voters that were supposed to prop him up. And given demographic changes in the south, he’ll likely be getting fewer Republican votes in places like Georgia and Texas, two deep red states that have been flashing blue a bit lately.
In other words, even if Trump does a bit better than a typical Republican nominee in places like Maine and Connecticut, he’s still underperforming Romney when it comes red states, which could easily cancel out any gains in Democratic areas. In fact, he’s currently underperforming Romney in a majority of states, a point recently made by Huffington Post polling director Ariel Edwards-Levy.
Trump is underperforming Romney in most states pic.twitter.com/lb32ZnKOAS
— Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) October 27, 2016
“Bottom line: if Trump wins the popular vote, the Electoral College will follow,” Donovan says. “And the sort of uniform swing you’d see there probably busts well through 270 electoral votes, in my opinion.”
Full piece here.