No, Trump can't win

The Washington Examiner ^ | April 11, 2016 | Timothy P. Carney

[2ndDivisionVet]

If Republicans nominate Donald Trump, they nearly cede the White House to Hillary Clinton. Trump wouldn't merely be an underdog in the general election. He would be the worst Republican nominee since Alf Landon 80 years ago.

The polls show Trump would be a disaster. To date, Trump's message control has been a disaster, and it would be a disaster in the general election. His political inexperience, which has hamstrung him in the primary cycle, would be a disaster in the fall.

All indications suggest a Trump versus Hillary battle would be a one-sided affair.

Poll problems

Donald Trump would be the most disliked major-party nominee in the history of favorability polling.

The only presidential candidate to beat him in unfavorability never got close to the nomination: Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, who had 69 percent unfavorable ratings in 1992 — and Duke was within the margin of error of Trump, who is currently at 67 percent unfavorable in a late-March ABC/Washington Post poll.

That means that for every American who has a favorable view of Donald Trump, more than two others have an unfavorable view. A majority of the country, 56 percent, have a "strongly unfavorable" view in that survey. Trump's 37 percentage-point net unfavorable rating makes Democratic front-runner Clinton, who is 6 percent underwater in favorability ratings, look more than likable enough.

A clear majority, 59 percent, do not find Clinton honest and trustworthy. That's much better than Trump, who is found dishonest or untrustworthy by 69 percent. Trump polls worse than Clinton on basically every question.

When asked if the candidate:

• "Understands the problems of people like you?" Clinton is in the negative, but still has a 13-point edge on Trump.

• "Has the right kind of experience to be president?" Clinton has a 40-point lead, 66-26, over Trump.

• "Has the personality and temperament it takes?" Clinton is 33 points stronger.

Trump would be the least-respected, least-liked major party nominee since polling began.

That's why Clinton leads Trump by double digits in most recent polls, with an average of 10.6 percent according to RealClearPolitics. She has led Trump in the RCP average for the entire campaign. That lead grew steadily throughout March, ever since Clinton and Trump became the clear front-runners for their party nominations.

Compare that to past elections. In the first half of April 2012, President Obama's lead over Mitt Romney hovered between 2.3-5.3 percent. Obama's largest lead in the RealClearPolitics average at any point in 2012 was 5.9 percent. Obama held a double-digit lead over Romney in only one poll after March 1, 2012.

Obama's largest lead over John McCain was eight points.

The problem isn't just Clinton's lead. It's Trump's apparent ceiling: His average in head-to-head national polls against Clinton has never climbed above 44 percent, and he's been hovering around 40 percent since Super Tuesday.

Electoral college

No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio, and Trump is looking bad in Ohio. Clinton beat Trump in all three Ohio polls conducted in March, by an average of six points.

Any review of the Electoral College looks ugly for Trump.

The website "270 to Win" looked at polling averages and found Clinton carrying 260 electoral votes to Trump's 115 votes, with 165 up for grabs. Clinton's vote total on the site doesn't include Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio or Florida, all states where Clinton has to be considered the favorite. If Clinton carried Minnesota, Ohio or Florida — any one of those — she would win.

Look at every other swing state. In New Hampshire, Trump trails in every poll this year, most recently by eight points. In Florida, Clinton leads by eight in the latest poll and 2.2 percent in the RealClearPolitics average. Clinton beat Trump in the only Iowa poll. Clinton beat Trump by 17 points in the only Virginia poll this year.

Trump says he can expand the electoral map and win in places Republicans haven't won in decades, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania. The polls don't concur.

Trump trails Clinton in Michigan by double digits in two polls conducted in late March. Every Michigan poll this year has shown Trump losing to Clinton significantly, and the margin grew after the Michigan GOP Primary, which Trump won.

Clinton led Trump in every Pennsylvania poll in March, most recently by 13 points. Trump hasn't cracked 40 percent in a single Pennsylvania survey this year.

Trump lacks the political skills

In some ways, Trump is a phenomenally effective politician. He couldn't have gotten to 45 percent nationally in a crowded field otherwise. He couldn't have won 20 states including New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida otherwise.

But he appears to lack the political skills to win in a general election.

First, we should expect Trump to flop in the debates. Trump had success in GOP primaries, but there was a reason he called them off — refusing to participate in a post-Florida Fox News debate and ignoring Ted Cruz's calls for one-on-one debates. Trump thrived in crowded debates where all he had to do was rudely put down Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio and where he could get away with always changing the topic.

In the less-crowded debates after South Carolina, Trump looked worse. Rubio exposed Trump's utter shallowness on healthcare policy, and Trump found himself flailing in policy areas where he was way out of his depth. Recent interviews, in which television journalists Anderson Cooper, John Dickerson and Chris Matthews pressed Trump on abortion or nuclear proliferation, exposed his incompetence.

In a one-on-one debate against Clinton, Trump's lack of policy knowledge and critical thinking skills would be glaring.

There's also the boorishness problem.

Despite all the talk about equality and equity, and treating women the same as men, we don't really live that way. Men are still expected to treat women with more courtesy than men treat other men. Put another way: You can be a boorish bully toward men in ways you can't toward women.

Trump probably helped himself by interrupting, insulting and sneering at Bush and Rubio. It may have been deliberate on his part, but it's also his personality. When he behaves that way toward Clinton, he will accomplish the incredible: making Americans feel sympathetic toward her.

Rick Lazio and Obama both learned that the hard way. In 2000, as Clinton was campaigning against soft money, Lazio walked across the stage, handed her a pledge to forego soft money and prodded her to sign it. Clinton was as evasive and equivocating as always, but with him leaning over her, pointing his finger at a small mother in a pastel pants suit, Lazio looked like a bully.

In New Hampshire in 2008, as Clinton gave a cheesy answer on her likability, Obama interjected with an offhand joke. "You're likable enough, Hillary," he said, a bit tersely. He lost New Hampshire.

Americans expect men to treat women with courtesy. Clinton would find it the easiest thing in the world to tease out Trump's rudeness — if she even had to try.

The money problem

The three factors for judging a candidate's strength are: the polls, the candidate's political skills and campaign cash. If Trump is flailing in national polls, state polls and favorability polls, and if he's an unprepared boor, at least he can spend his billions, right?

Wrong. Trump would be steamrolled by Clinton's cash juggernaut, even worse than other Republican candidates would be.

Trump hasn't sworn off fundraising. His website and his ads all solicit donations. But he has barely raised any money — $10 million in contributions and $24 million in loans to himself as of the end of March.

Trump also has no experience raising campaign cash. He has alienated the two parts of the Republican Party that do have experience raising money: the establishment-K Street axis and the Tea Party groups. Many businesses already have expressed unwillingness to attach themselves to a Trump nomination.

And Trump probably can't close the gap with his own wealth. Clinton will spend more than a billion dollars in the general election. We don't know Trump's net worth exactly, but we do know the higher estimates all include the value of his name brand, which is not a liquid asset. His buildings, his golf courses and his casinos are not liquid assets, either. Trump probably doesn't have a spare billion in cash to spend.

He lacks the political skills, the likability, the public support and the fundraising ability to beat Hillary Clinton. That's why he won't even come close.

[dp0622]

Maybe we’ll pull 40 percent this time. Would help in NY and FL.

[The Iceman Cometh]

I'm voting for Trump.

Ditto. After 30 years as a Republican, Ted Cruz has caused me to leave the party.

[smoothsailing]

If he’s the nominee, expect Trump to be relentless in elevating Clinton’s negatives. It will be brutal. All the polling cited in this article will be irrelevant.

[dead]

I live in north Jersey and work in Manhattan. I know literally hundreds of liberals. Just about all of them dislike Cruz intensely. But Trump literally makes them struggle not to cry and they believe we will all die in a nuclear furnace of hatred if he prevails.

They like Kasich, but in the way they like McCain - they would never ever in a million billion years vote for him, but he isn't the very worst person who ever lived.

People who imagine Trump will win over some liberals are just your typical disfunctional Trump bronies, with weird orange unicorn fantasies.

Liberals won't vote for Cruz either, but nobody in the Cruz camp imagines they will.

[LibFreeUSA]

2ndDivisonVet a CRUZBOT, who has no qualms relying on "Timothy P Carney", an avowed conservative trasher, as well as anti-TRUMP and anti-Reagan mouthpiece, who co-wrote a ANTI-TRUMP article for the NY Times .... "Donald Trump's America"

TIMOTHY P CARNEY:

"Donald J. Trump's calls for barring Muslims from entering the United States and for rounding up and throwing out millions of immigrants (whom he called "rapists"), as well as his frequent falsehoods and his saying that a protester beaten at one of his rallies "should have been roughed up," have drawn comparisons to the days of Hitler and Mussolini. How can a man of such extreme views be the leading Republican candidate in the polls? What does Mr. Trump's popularity say about his supporters, and America?"

"Foot soldiers in an army formed by Reagan"

"The spectacle of hate-mongering unleashed by Donald Trump may be shocking, but it's merely a result of the natural evolution of the modern American right that drove the election of Ronald Reagan 35 years ago.

[central_va]

Hillary is gong to look like the old hag she really is next to Trump. No kid gloves this time because Trump will really go after her.

[JoSixChip]

Many others just consider him a goofy childish clown.

And many consider you an ignorant POS.

[Maurice Tift]

  Trump is actually the first candidate since Reagan that I really like. In 1980, I was a delegate supporting Reagan at the State convention in Georgia and I could see the way he upset the moderates (Bush supporters)(we just call them 'establishment' now). Anyway, Trump is making the establishment reveal themselves and for me, it's a blast to see it happening again and it's more public this time. You don't have to be an insider to see the establishment crackup, so - yes - from my point of view, this is exciting.

Reagan Can't Win - Ford Says (March 1980)

[Chainmail]

Cruz also espouses creepy opportunism, big-buck donors, and DNC tactics.
Time to repatriate him.

[XEHRpa]

But it’s not only my braindeaded liberal friends who prefer Trump to Cruz as the nominee. It is the Republican voters, as well. This notion that Cruz is better situated to take the general election is a pipe dream, even if he were to take the nomination uncontested. But since that is not the case, sticking to Cruz after he loses a numerical path to uncontested nomination next Tuesday is equivalent to advocating for President Hillary. Because the only contested nominee (of 8) to defeat an uncontested nominee in the last 100 years was FDR in 1932 (aftermath of the stock market crash).

[fr_freak]

The very nature of articles such as these is quite a bit underhanded. The author here, and every author of such things, isn't trying to convince anyone of the worth of the candidate as he might perform in office, but is instead simply trying to demoralize the candidate's supporters by saying that none of the cool kids will vote for him. To me that is a highly manipulative tactic, although a common one. It is the same tactic used when people say things like "Stop fighting gay marriage - it's inevitable. You're on the wrong side of history."

If something is right, it is right, whether you believe it will win or not. And if a candidate is the right one - he is the right one, whether you believe he can win or not. Is there any rational point in voting for a wrong candidate just because "he can win"? What have you gained from that?

With that in mind, this author fails on three levels:

1) He is starting with a useless, irrational, and manipulative argument

2) He is claiming to know something he can't possibly know so far in advance of the election

3) He is implying that, since this frontrunner is unelectable, you must vote for the other frontrunner, failing to take into account completely the fact that the other frontrunner is likely less electable than Trump.

[bobby.223]

I had not seen those! Holy cow!

[Defiant]

Slimey Ted can't win. No one likes him.

Trump will win in a landslide.

[JPJones]

“A very astute analysis.”

Thank you, I’ve been looking at RCP and 270towin for a long time.

” How does Cruz, limping out of a contested convention, then win over the voters of the four purple states Romney and McCain both lost, and which Cruz will absolutely have to win to beat Hillary?”

He can’t. He has little or no appeal to northern working class.

“Cruz came in a distant third in OH, FL, NV and VA.”

Cruz can’t win FL. So if he’s the nominee, it will be over real quick, Hillary will be announced president-elect at about 6pm election night.

“Even under the best of conditions it would be an uphill climb for Cruz to win them. But Cruz will not have the best of conditions. He will be the winner of a contested convention, something that current polling isn’t taking into consideration. After the damage inflicted by the contested convention process, it will only take a few percent of disgruntled Trump voters in those four states to stay home and Cruz has no path to 270.”

Yup, as soon as Cruz is nominated, Hillary has automatically won 254 electoral votes, she only needs to campaign in and win one more state: NC. Easy-peezy for her.

[kabar]

He's ahead in delegates, but less than 200 hardly qualifies as "by far" when he need 1237. It's a lead though, for now.

200 plus (not less than 200) delegates represents 31% of all the delegates awarded to date and 37% of the votes cast compared to 28% for Cruz.

The lead will grow significantly when voters go to the polls in NY (95 delegates) on April 19. April 26 will see primaries in CT, PA, DE, MD, and RI with a total of 172 delegates at stake. Trump holds a commanding lead in all of these races. By April 26 Cruz will be mathematically eliminated from reaching 1,237. Trump will be the only candidate left with a shot at 1,237.

Might not hold up if the delegates go to a second ballot though, in accordance with the established rules.

That is the only shot for Cruz and Kasich. And if you take Paul Ryan's statement as gospel, the guy in charge of the convention, he indicated that any of the 17 who participated in the process would be eligible including Jeb and Marco.

[XEHRpa]

An interesting statistic will be the raw vote tallies coming out of NY City next week. I don’t know NY politics, except by its ultra-liberal reputation, but perhaps insights can be gleaned by looking at the Clinton, Trump, Cruz, Sanders vote tallies, compared with the registration tally.

[true believer forever]

Feel free to refute it point-by-point, if you are able.

I am violating my lifelong principle never to engage with stupid people but it is an election season, and you seem very very lost and in need of help. I included nice shiny pictures with happy colors and pretty numbers, I am not sure what your reading skills are.

From your usually dubious posting:

1 The three factors for judging a candidate's strength are: the polls, the candidate's political skills and campaign cash. If Trump is flailing in national polls, state polls ...

WOW! Trump’s Lead Surges to 60% in New York State – Tops Ted Cruz by 46 Points! http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/04/wow-trumps-lead-new-york-surges-60-leads-ted-cruz-46-vote/

/>

2)That's why Clinton leads Trump by double digits in most recent polls ...

Latest NBC poll Apr 12 2016, 6:07 am ET Poll: Voters Split Between Clinton and Trump in Hypothetical November Matchup

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/poll-voters-split-between-clinton-trump-hypothetical-november-matchup-n554306

[disndat]

But Trump literally makes them struggle not to cry and they believe we will all die in a nuclear furnace of hatred if he prevails.

That is IT! dead is RIGHT! We all get to be the SAME! LOOK OUT dead. Here come the dead! GO TRUMP!

[Lurker]

You go right on telling yourself that.

Please.

L

[Conservative Gato]

Thanks for posting that. I like to call all this for what it is and that is propaganda. It’s amazing to see a few of these Freepers fall for it.

CGato