538 confirms what I’ve been saying. Because of polarization, Trump has a firm floor of 48% of the vote. This was never going to be the blow out election Democrats dreamed of when they saw Trump rising in the polls. It was always going to be nip and tuck. Long story, short: I am vindicated.
Polarization notwithstanding, it’s at least a little amazing how quickly and easily Trump — who has bucked party orthodoxy on a range of issues — consolidated the GOP vote. The fact that Republican voters are treating him as any other nominee may give him a floor on his support, ensuring he doesn’t get blown out by Clinton. Even if Clinton wins most voters in the center of the political spectrum, it’ll be difficult for her to run up the score if Trump is pulling a similar percentage of Republicans as past nominees did. The last time either party’s nominee won the general election by double digits (1984), he pulled a quarter of the opposing party’s voters.
Of course, securing your base is a necessary but not sufficient condition to win elections. President Obama led pretty much wire-to-wire in the 2012 presidential race and ended up beating Romney by 4 percentage points, despite Romney, at this point in that campaign, taking in more of the Republican vote than any nominee since 1980. Obama was able to win four years ago by holding onto 92 percent of Democratic voters. That is, polarization works both ways, keeping Democrats voting for the Democratic nominee and Republicans voting for the Republican nominee.
In national polls right now, Trump is benefiting from Clinton’s inability to hold her own base. Clinton is struggling tremendously with Democratic-leaning independents, who tend to be Bernie Sanders supporters. That has allowed Trump to close the gap with Clinton in the polls, though he still trails in most surveys.
So now it falls to Clinton to hurry up and win the votes of Democratic voters and create a similar rock solid base of support. How can she do it? I’d suggest naming Elizabeth Warren as her presumptive pick for the VP spot. That should ally the lingering fears of Democratic base voters that Clinton is just another bought and paid for instrument of the corporate oligarchy.
