you mean in the generals? i'm gonna completely step out of my Cruz shoes and be impartial on this statement. I dont see any NYers or NJ dems switching. I just dont Independents, he could definitely win over. but you guys, come on, remember what dms vote for, abortion and free stuff. and gay and transgender rights. there's no dem army coming to the rescue. And we dont need them! if there were that many dems, he would be up 8 on hillary instead of 3. PA, Ohio, Florida, W Virginia? yeah, those he could grab. but please let's not count on CA, NY, and NJ. it's not worth the money, time or ground game.
WV is not a problem and is pretty much "red" these days, if he goes into Coal Country and the Rust Belt with an energy and jobs platform like Reagan then it is not an issue whatsoever. It is VA itself that is a problem. He is far better positioned than Cruz to compete in Virginia, at least in NOVA where Cruz would be seen as the devil himself. SOVA is reliably "red" and will go as we expect. Virginia is difficult, and was lost by McCain and Romney.
The last two cycles have left us with twelve purple states according to most trackers of this kind of electoral data ... OH, PA, MI, WI, NC, IN, VA, FL, NM, NV, IA, CO. This is where the election is decided. Now of those twelve swing states, McCain/Palin picked up Zero and Romney/Ryan picked up just Two ( NC and IN ). I can see almost all of them as competetive with Trump. Interestingly, Trump might actually place a couple of recent "blue" states back into purple territory like NH too. We'll have to see.
I disagree about not "wasting money" in the deep "blue" states. That is GOPe, Rove, McCain and Romney style strategy, doomed to fail. Trump needs to take it right into the heart of the enemy, Doolittle raids on SF, LA, NYC, Chicago, etc. This will draw the enemy (D)ummycrats into defending areas they never have to worry about. These are *expensive* markets and they have limited resources at their disposal this time. Hitting them in their pocketbook here will leave many other areas undefended, and if the RNC had a brain they could capitalize on this by clobbering the (D)ummies in all other offices.
On the surface CA, NY and IL are definite longshots, particularly the first two. I calculate that Trump would need a massive 15% (D) crossover to put my state of NY back into play. However, if a spoiler like Bloomberg is on the ballot, he might just accomplish a miracle here after all.
Lesser crossovers are needed in "blue" NJ, CT, OR, WA, and there is a possibility, a tough but possible one, of flipping one of these. When election night rolls around, if a single "blue" state gets flipped or is real close, then the (D)ummycrat enemy should immediately begin drinking as they are in for a very bad night.
i always wonder why IL was blue. Seems like it should be red