Cable news, conservative pundits, and some Republican politicians are forecasting a massive defeat for Donald Trump, urging the Republican National Committee to dump him and avoid suffering greater down-ballot loses.
While it’s undeniable that Trump’s campaign has had a horrible three weeks where they’ve collapsed in national polls and received negative news coverage, the Republican frontrunner is polling well in swing states.
In the key swing states of Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Florida, Trump is closer to beating Hillary Clinton than Mitt Romney was to beating President Obama.
According to the Real Clear Politics polling average, Trump is at 42.3 percent in Pennsylvania, four points from Clinton. That includes an outlier NBC/Marist poll that has Trump down by 15 percent while every other poll has him tied. Exclude those numbers, and the Republican and Democratic frontrunner would basically be tied at 43 percent.
Romney was nowhere close to Obama’s numbers in the Keystone state. In 2012, RCP showed Romney’s average at 39.5 percent to Obama’s 47.4, down about 8 points.
In probably the most important swing state, Florida, Trump and Clinton are in the margin of error in every state poll except one. Overall, Clinton leads Trump by a meager 1.6 percent, according to the RCP average.
Like Trump, the polls taken between late May to mid-June in 2012 showed Romney losing the Sunshine State by the same basic overall margin.
Excluding duplicate polling and only taking the most recent Quinnipiac poll, Obama averaged 47 percent to Romney’s 45 percent. Still a small gap, but larger than the one between Trump and Clinton.
Another important swing state for Republicans, Ohio, shows a similar story to that of Florida: the margins are small, but Trump is closer to defeating Clinton than Romney was to Obama.
Trump averages 41.3 percent to Clinton’s 42.7 percent. Well within the margin of error, but the Democratic frontrunner has a 1.4 point advantage.
Romney’s RCP average was 43.6 percent to Obama’s 46 percent, a 2.6 point difference.
Trump’s detractors can say that most of the polls were taken before his most recent set of scandals. That’s true. Virginia, however, was polled after several weeks of massive negative news coverage and once again showed the billionaire in the margin of error with Clinton.
According to RCP, Trump is polling 4 points behind Clinton, with an old Christopher Newport poll being an outlier for Clinton. Without that March poll, the Republican frontrunner would land just 2.3 percent away from the former first lady.
During the same time in 2012, Romney was getting trounced by Obama in the commonwealth, averaging 44.7 percent to Obama’s 47.7 percent, with a heavy outlier poll taken by WeAskAmerica pushing it in the former Massachusetts governor’s favor. Without it, Obama’s margin would be 4.3 points instead of 3.
So for all the establishment Republicans screaming about the greatest landslide loss since Barry Goldwater, Trump is basically polling equal to or greater than Romney, a man they believed would easily beat Obama.
Pundits are doing in the general what they tried in the primary: creating a narrative rather than detailing facts. Moral of the story, people screaming the loudest are often times the least informed.
