I spoke with The Atlantic‘s Ron Brownstein about the 2016 presidential map as a window into the congressional electoral future.

The vividly contrasting voting patterns of 2016, with Trump posting big gains over Romney in heavily blue-collar House districts and Clinton improving over Obama in a broad swathe of white-collar districts, may have offered a fast-forward preview of how the House may evolve in coming years. “It was like looking decades in the future, and this is what it looks like,” said GOP strategist Liam Donovan, referring to the 2016 results. “If you just push down the gas and let it rip [on the class resorting], this is what it is going to look like.”

…

“Where Hillary enjoyed a big bump in these congressional districts, it was clustered in the affluent ’burbs of Dallas, Atlanta, D.C., Chicago, L.A.,” said Donovan, the GOP strategist and director of legislative and political affairs for the Associated Builders and Contractors trade association. “The question for the long run is: What is more likely, that those people fully evolve into Democratic voters or do they snap back to the Republicans?”

As education and diversity levels both rise, Republicans are divided over whether the long-term demographic swap in each party’s House caucus is a good bet for the party. Patrick Ruffini, a GOP consultant who specializes in demographic trends, said House Republicans can offset any Trump-era losses in white-collar and diverse districts with even deeper gains among blue-collar voters or by finding creative ways to separate themselves from him. “To what extent are you going to see the non-college white population … feeling even more alienated and therefore voting more Republican?” he said. Stephen Bannon, Trump’s top White House strategist, also pointed to a blue-collar GOP future when he told The Washington Post in an email Tuesday that the administration is “developing populist nation-state policies that are supported by the vast and overwhelming majority of Americans, but are poorly understood by cosmopolitan elites in the media that live in a handful of our larger cities.”

Tom Davis, by contrast, is dubious Republicans will ultimately benefit from this rolling class realignment: “It didn’t surprise me that Trump saw this [resorting] and put an exclamation point on it,” Davis said, “but it’s still a loser for Republicans long-term.” Donovan largely agrees: “Even as these Trump [blue-collar] gains happened, the share of the non-college white vote actually dropped and the college vote increased. So if you are handicapping the future … going all in on the Trump path is a dangerous proposition.”

Full piece here– recommended reading.

The Hill‘s Jonathan Swan looks at Trump’s apparent consolidation of the GOP base down the stretch:

“We treat him like a toddler who should get an electoral cookie for not soiling himself in public,” said Liam Donovan, a former aide to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Then again, Republican voters seem to be rewarding him for it, so go figure.”

More than anything he has done or said, Donovan thinks Trump’s improved standing probably has to do with FBI Director James Comey shifting the public’s focus to Clinton by informing lawmakers last week of the FBI’s discovery of emails that may be relevant to the bureau’s investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information.

“Especially insofar as FBI leaks and WikiLeaks chatter have crowded out any Trump oppo,” he added, “and kept what has been dropped from getting any real traction.”

Full piece here.

UPDATE:

???? pic.twitter.com/wZ1tS08JU2

— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) November 6, 2016

The Hill‘s Jonathan Swan and Niall Stanage see Republican voters coming home to Trump:

Liam Donovan, a former aide to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that recent polls notwithstanding, Trump’s “greatest challenge” has been his inability to consolidate self-identified Republicans.

“At some level the base naturally wants to come home, but Trump’s mouth keeps getting in the way,” Donovan said. “When the polling looks good it’s because he is performing like previous nominees — no more, no less.”

Donovan said Trump gains with hesitant Republicans only when he campaigns with discipline.

Offering Trump some unsolicited advice, Donovan said, “Put away the Android Twitter app. Let the news cycle consume your opponent instead of trying to seize back the spotlight.”

Full piece here.

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.

The Hill‘s Jonathan Swan ponders Donald Trump’s narrow path to 270 electoral votes:

In reality, however, Trump has the much tougher path to 270, assuming polls are reasonably accurate.

In fact, Liam Donovan, a former aide to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, argues a Trump win would depend on a “huge systemic failure.”

“Trump isn’t going to thread the needle,” he said. “If he wins, it’s because everything we know is wrong.”

If everything pollsters are doing is wrong, Donovan said, it’s possible a whole host of states could go to Trump. But that’s not to say he’s arguing that possibility is likely.

“For instance, Pennsylvania doesn’t flip without a uniform swing that would bring Colorado and Nevada and Wisconsin and New Hampshire with it,” he said. “So it seems like boom or bust from my standpoint, with almost metaphysical certitude on bust.”

Full piece here.