2016: President Mitt Romney vs Sec. Hillary Clinton

[Vice President Christian Man]

It would depend on his approval rating. If Romney goes in with Obama-level approval ratings of around 60%, he'd easily win the Trump states plus Colorado, Nevada, Minnesota, New Hampshire, ME-AL and either narrowly win or lose Delaware and Virginia. I think he'd also perform at Bush 2004 levels along The West Coast and get within single digits of taking Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. While people may be puzzled of the first two, people seem to forget how popular of a governor Mitt was in Massachusetts and I anticipate he'd have high approval ratings for a Republican in that state, as well as neighboring Rhode Island. The only states Romney would lose by double digits would be the Democratic strongholds of Illinois (plus Clinton's homestate advtange), Obama's homestate of Hawaii, Maryland with a lot of federal workers, and her adoptive homestate of New York. At the same time if Dems take back the house in 2014 and it becomes a lame duck, I can see Romney losing by around what the polls predicted Trump would lose by. The more likely scenario is that he does slightly worse than Trump (switching NV, CO, NH+ME with MI+PA).