Chris Cillizza starts the analysis of the Electoral Map:
Electoral Map 5/4/2016
So if she counts on winning the states that Dems usually win plus Florida, she wins.
The GOP starts with a map that gets them 102 votes. They have to get 168 more electoral votes — which is a tougher task than Hillary’s 29. Which, really, was the GOP’s problem in 2012 when Obama won re-election.
Cook Electoral 5/4/2016
Cillizza also shows this Cook Report distribution of how states have voted in Presidentials in the past 20 years, which further demonstrates how much work the GOP has ahead of it.
What you are left with then is an electoral map in which the Democratic nominee begins at a significant advantage over the Republican one. (It is the obverse of the massive Republican electoral college edge of the 1980s.) And that edge is totally distinct from any individual candidate and his/her strengths or weaknesses. Yes, Trump as the nominee is more problematic than Ryan as the nominee, but the idea that Ryan would start the general election with a coin-flip chance of being elected president is just wrong.
Right. And Trump certainly doesn’t have a coin-flip chance, either. Which isn’t to say that anything could happen, but right now the map is still a D advantage.