The Trump-Clinton Race Is Not As Close As It Looks

National Journal ^ | May 30, 2016 | Charlie Cook

[2ndDivisionVet]

With its nomination settled, the GOP has been healing its wounds, but Democratic feelings are still raw because of the ongoing fight between Clinton and Sanders.

The latest round of polls re­leased pri­or to Me­mori­al Day week­end, which showed Hil­lary Clin­ton and Don­ald Trump in a vir­tu­al tie, set off in­tense hand-wringing among Demo­crats, Clin­ton back­ers, and Trump de­tract­ors alike. They much pre­ferred the polls from a month earli­er giv­ing the former sec­ret­ary of State a double-di­git lead over the real-es­tate mogul.

What’s lost on many people is that any tri­al heat between Trump and Clin­ton today is like com­par­ing apples and or­anges. Trump’s nom­in­a­tion fight is over while Clin­ton’s con­test is still at a messy stage. Re­pub­lic­ans who backed one of the 16 oth­er GOP can­did­ates have co­alesced to a sig­ni­fic­ant de­gree, pain­fully pro­gress­ing through Eliza­beth Kü­bler-Ross’s five stages of grief: deni­al, an­ger, bar­gain­ing, de­pres­sion, and ac­cept­ance.

Many es­tab­lish­ment fig­ures, who I nev­er thought would come to terms with Trump as the GOP nom­in­ee, have now moved to heal­ing and clos­ure, if some­what re­luct­antly. They are quick to point out that Trump wasn’t their first choice, but, when the bugle soun­ded, they and oth­er party war horses got in line. Some­times it was more a mat­ter of lin­ing up against Clin­ton rather than be­hind Trump, and some even found it dif­fi­cult to en­dorse Trump by name. One former Re­pub­lic­an sen­at­or com­pared Trump to the vil­lain­ous Harry Pot­ter char­ac­ter Lord Vol­de­mort, “he who must not be named.” Even so, most par­tis­ans ul­ti­mately get be­hind their can­did­ate, for bet­ter or worse, and so it is with today’s Re­pub­lic­ans....

[houeto]

Sorry. Meant to ping you to the post Vet.

[Lakeshark]

Convinced of what?

Is building a wall and stopping illegals from pouring in you need to be convinced about?

Is stopping muzzies from coming in indiscriminately and destroying our country something you need convincing about?

Is destroying ISIS and radical Islam something you need convincing about?

Is rebuilding our military and rewarding our vets something you need convincing about?

Is returning our economy to the strength of free enterprise and valuing growth something you need convincing about?

Is regaining a conservative SC something you need convincing about?

Is curtailing spending something you need convincing about?

Is replacing bamster care with a free market based health care system something you need convincing about?

If so, you might need to redefine what you mean by conservative. ......

[lquist1]

“The hope is that about 30% of Sanders suporters go to Trump. Problem is that Hillary is closer to the socialists than Trumps is percieved being to the conservatives. I think that 25% of disaffecteds of either party won’t vote for either major candidate.”

Trump will need at least 30% of Sanders supporters to “redraw the political map” as he is supposedly doing. I think if the election were held today, there would be at least that many Sanders supporters open to voting for Trump. The problem though is that, just as most GOP voters will “come home” and vote for the nominee, the same thing is likely to happen on the Dem side.

At the end of the day, the candidate with the highest unfavorables in November is the one most likely to lose. This is one trend that has held true in every election since they started measuring this number in 1972.