Why Donald Trump wont win the US election
The arithmetic
is clear and devastating for Trump. Both campaigns
quietly agree Trump will need to win a clean sweep of all four crucial
battleground
states
Hussein Ibish
The American presidential election is over. Republican candidate Donald Trump has virtually no hope of winning. Barring the most extreme and implausible of unforeseen circumstances, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States.
Conventional wisdom holds that it is ridiculous, and perhaps even dangerous, to say any such a thing. The primary objection is that with 11 weeks to go, too many things can suddenly transform the political landscape for any categorical statements at this stage. Moreover, its added, debates and other strategic opportunities will provide Trump with several chances to correct his image and potentially overtake s Clinton.
If one were focusing strictly on the popular vote this is plausible, although there would still be a strong basis for concluding the election is all but over. By this stage, polls are prescriptive and rarely so wildly incorrect as to produce a Trump victory. Virtually every poll shows s Clinton with commanding leads nationally, in all the key battleground states, and even in several traditionally solid Republican ones.
A combination of factors might, just possibly, swing the aggregate national popular vote in Trumps direction. But thats not how American presidential elections are decided. They are based on an electoral ollege system largely structured by a winner-take-all arrangement. If a given state gets 12 electoral college votes based on its population, then whichever candidate wins that state, no matter how narrowly, gets all 12 of those votes.
This means that national popular vote majorities are not decisive. The question is who can get to 270 electoral college votes winning state-by-state. The electoral college map has been shifting in recent years in favour of the Democrats. Moreover, Trumps bizarre campaign has hurt him where he needs to win most: key battleground states.
The arithmetic is clear and devastating for him. Both campaigns quietly agree Trump will need to win a clean sweep of all four crucial battleground states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and North Carolina. Both agree that if he drops even one, he will certainly lose.
s Clinton has clear or commanding leads in all four of these states, and, astonishingly, is running even with Trump in several traditionally solid Republican states, including Georgia and South Carolina. He is not receiving the same support from white males that Mitt Romney did four years ago (indeed it seems to be slipping), and is faring disastrously with minorities and women.
It is scarcely possible to imagine that he can win all four of these states without exception, given the apparent state of the election a mere 11 weeks away (and some potentially significant absentee voting begins in late September).
If Clinton had to win all four of these states, her campaign would, quite properly, be extremely nervous. Still, she could pull it off, and certainly has a much better chance to do so than he does.
But it is a very heavy lift for any candidate to sweep all four key battleground states. For Trump, he will have to do it charging wildly from behind, with what everyone agrees is an insufficient ground game at the local level, campaign staff at every level, public messaging strategy, and with the profound distrust of a large majority of the public.
Decent Republican leaders should offer the country a heartfelt mea culpa.
The behaviour of cable network news is another part of this distressing story. It has also played a role in fuelling the Trump phenomenon. He was entertainment and was good for ratings. When he boycotted Fox, CNN stepped up. With countdown clocks in the lower corner of the screen, they breathlessly announced and then covered, in full, his rallies. They, and other networks, allowed him to phone in to their interview programmes and hired his spokespeople as analysts and commentators giving Mr Trump unprecedented free media coverage.
As the United States enters the final stretch of this deeply troubling contest, the same disturbing dynamics are still at work. Mr Trump commits more daily outrages. Republican leaders act surprised, distance themselves, play coy or become defensive, trying to explain the inexplicable. The network pundits are once again proclaiming Mr Trump dead in the water, citing recent polls showing him down anywhere from 4 to 11 points. At the same time, they bizarrely host endless debates between Trump defenders and detractors arguing pointlessly whether he really was encouraging gun owners to assassinate his opponent or exactly what he meant by saying that Mr Obama is the founder of ISIL.
The casts of thousands at Trump rallies who cheer his every word, become gleeful at his insults and share his anger at his many enemies dont seem to care that he insulted a Gold Star Muslim familys sacrifice, or playfully threatened his opponent with assassination, or repeatedly and brazenly lies. He is their champion and they appear to see attacks on him as attacks on them.
The American political class has expressed stupefaction. Prominent supporters of Mr Trumps own party have challenged the notion of a rigged election. Charles Fried, a Harvard law professor and Ronald Reagans former solicitor general, lambasted the invitation to violence and civic disruption. American journalists have dared their tribe to do the patriotic thing and expose fears of electoral fraud as fantasy. Magical realism is being employed in serious political magazines such as Foreign Policy to visualise an America in uproar about a stolen election, with Mr Trump refusing to accept the result and encouraging people to take to the streets.
There is anxiety that this electoral seasons low politicking will delegitimize the democratic process by which America sets such store, even presuming to export it to distant parts of the world. There is the embarrassing possibility that the United States, which routinely counsels other countries on the need for a fair and non-violent election process, may wind up needing intervention itself. For the first time in modern American history, there are concerns about the peaceful transfer of power.
It figures. No major party presidential candidate has ever cast doubt on the American democratic system as a whole. The 2000 election, in which Democratic Party candidate Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college to George W Bush, was probably the worst-case scenario. But even after that contentious chapter, Mr Gore did not suggest that Mr Bush was an illegitimate president. Instead, he invoked the stirring words of senator Stephen Douglas on being defeated by Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and declared that partisan feeling must yield to patriotism this is America, and we put country before party. We will stand together behind our new president.
The writer is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington
