I just have a really hard time believing Trump will win 52% of college-educated whites, but I guess older ones might vote differently than the ones around my age.
I could see it happening. A lot of suburbanite Republicans are going to hold their nose and vote for Trump. At least half of my Republican friends between 25-35 are planning to vote for Trump, even if they supported the likes of Kasich, Rubio and Bush in the primaries. More will come around as reality sinks in. There are also a decent number of college-educated folks who have blue-collar backgrounds, e.g. those who went to school on the GI Bill, and most of them are going to be voting for Trump.
It's more than this. Think super-low turnout like 1996. College-educated white voters drop 6% to 70% turnout. However, young college-educated voters make up the majority of the drop and they are the more Dem fraction, so his percentage only drops 2% overall with college-educated whites.
I expect black turnout to drop 10% to around 56% putting them in line with non-college educated whites who drop 3% to 54% turnout. I also think that with such low turnout the Pub% could creep up 5% to 12% of the black vote.
The other minority groups become 3% more Dem, but drop 8% in turnout following the national trend of being between the white 6% and black 10% drop off in turnout.
Then all it takes is for Trump to increase his fraction of the non-college whites up to 70%. This can happen by dropping off some of the youth vote which is heavy Dem. The older non-college whites have been heavily trending Pub over the last few cycles, and its the group Trump has most concentrated on. At that point the 538 calculator gives Trump the win.
Try it.