2016: Mitt Romney vs. Hillary Clinton (Romney decides to run in '16)

[Alben Barkley]

Same map as 2012, with the possible exception of some or all of FL/OH/IA.

Romney does not win over Obama voters in the rust belt like Trump did so he still ends up running into the blue wall. He ultimately does about as well as Jeb! or most other generic Republicans would have. Kasich could have won, in part because he was actually from the region and had a more blue collar, regular guy image in contrast to Romney's "elitist" image. But guys like Jeb! and Romney would have been seen as out-of-touch, rejected has-beens and stiffs. They wouldn't have more appeal than they did before. Trump was able to both convert large numbers of blue collar Obama voters AND boost turnout among WWC voters in general to levels a guy like Romney never could have.

A Romney/Clinton election would have had low turnout and been seen by most people as boring; Hillary basically wins by default due to a combination of Obama's popularity, her being more inspiring to her base than Romney is to his, the allure of electing the first woman president, and the fact that the country is essentially lean D so in order to win Republicans have to rely on inching out victories in states where Romney had just lost soundly four years before. And for the reasons mentioned, there's not really any reason to think he would have done a lot better the next time.