02-06-2019, 11:21 PM
Many polls that make a distinction have strong disapproval for the President higher than total approval. That should make canvassing difficult for Republicans. On the statewide polling since the November election, I see no states yet for which approval of the President is above water -- even Alaska or Utah.
We are all accustomed to nearly-even Presidential races, but I already see a disaster in the making. Whether Trump loses California 55-45 or 70-30 will not make a difference in the state's 55 electoral votes. There are just so many ways for the President to lose and very few ways for him to win. At this stage I use a probabilistic model, and the zone of possibilities looks to be fully outside the zone of any reasonable chance of a Trump re-election. The strongest position that I can now see for President Trump is that he wins all the states in which Democrats got less than the majority of the vote in House elections. That is a 295-242 win in the Electoral College for a Democrat.
To say that the dynamics must change sharply for President Trump to have a chance to win re-election is about like predicting that summer will be hot in Texas.
We are all accustomed to nearly-even Presidential races, but I already see a disaster in the making. Whether Trump loses California 55-45 or 70-30 will not make a difference in the state's 55 electoral votes. There are just so many ways for the President to lose and very few ways for him to win. At this stage I use a probabilistic model, and the zone of possibilities looks to be fully outside the zone of any reasonable chance of a Trump re-election. The strongest position that I can now see for President Trump is that he wins all the states in which Democrats got less than the majority of the vote in House elections. That is a 295-242 win in the Electoral College for a Democrat.
To say that the dynamics must change sharply for President Trump to have a chance to win re-election is about like predicting that summer will be hot in Texas.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.