Pew: Clinton +9

[pbrower2a]

Winning college educated whites by 12 points! Here comes the landslide!

Figuring that Hillary Clinton will do as well among every obvious religious, racial, and ethnic minority as Barack Obama... Donald Trump could fare as badly as Barry Goldwater in 1964. He probably wins the sorts of people who would vote for Strom Thurmond in 1948 or George Wallace in 1968, which will prevent him from losing in a 49-state landslide. 

[pbrower2a]

Can we talk about the fact that Johnson's leading Trump among 18-29 year olds?

The right-leaning of the Millennial generation are less religious and have nothing to gain from the GOP's crony capitalism. For them, libertarianism is a new and practically revolutionary ideology. The GOP seems to them a cause for price-fixing, heavy personal debt, and low pay. 

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The more that Sanders supporters see or hear of Donald Trump, the more realistic they will get about him.

....All in all, margins seem to shrink once one recognizes Gary Johnson as a Third Party nominee who can take a big  piece of the vote --  but by doing so he also reduces the threshold for a Clinton victory.

[pbrower2a]

Every pollster has a model, a different set of assumptions. Assume certain things, and Clinton is up by middle-single digits. Assume others, and she is up in the high-single digits or low-double digits.

We have a political insider, probably the most blatant political insider since the elder Bush, running against someone with no experience in elected or appointed office. We also have a lame-duck President who could be re-elected if he so wished, except that the 22nd Amendment gets in the way. But that does not help someone running to replace him. 

[pbrower2a]

Even shifts might be rough approximations for elections differing in the national margin by 4% or less. Obama 2008 is the max-out for Democratic performance in a binary election in many states. so should Hillary Clinton win in 2012 by something like a 10% in a binary election, then she wins about everything that Obama won in 2008 (Indiana is a possible exception because 2008 was the Perfect Storm to wreck Republican chances of winning the state that year. Replicating that would require a credit crunch, exorbitant petroleum prices, and an economic meltdown with a Republican incumbent. With a Democratic incumbent? The Democrat would lose Indiana about 65-35 and the US as a whole about 55-45).

A number as Pew has suggests the possibility of a Trump collapse. If he is getting 68-20 with the votes of under-educated white people, practically breaking even with white people, and losing badly with Asians, Hispanics, an blacks, then he stands to lose about like Stevenson did to Eisenhower... twice. Under-educated white people are not going to convince any other people  to go their way.  It is more likely that such people will meet someone who disabuses them of their hollow reasons for voting for Donald Trump.

I look at the overlay between the electoral maps of Eisenhower and Obama and I see Obama winning practically nothing (North Carolina, once, and barely in 2008) that Eisenhower didn't win. Ike won the ranching states that Obama did not win...  

Could it be that Barack Obama and Dwight Eisenhower have similar temperaments (cautious, trusting legal precedent over fickle opinion, scandal-avoiding)? Maybe that is reflected in the states. Where educational standards were highest in the 1950s, Eisenhower did well.  Those are roughly the same states today. At least one historical pattern suggests that Barack Obama acts like a 60-something member of the Lost Generation, like Harry Truman or Dwight Eisenhower.      

What happens if the pattern of "solid education, vote against Trump" holds?  I can see Hillary Clinton winning some states that Eisenhower won but Obama didn't.