No, the Battleground States Are Not a Terrific Fit for Donald Trump

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No, the Battleground States Are Not a Terrific Fit for Donald Trump

By NATE COHN and TONI MONKOVIC at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/upshot/no-the-battleground-states-are-not-a-terrific-fit-for-donald-trump.html

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Toni Mitch Stewart, who served as battleground states director for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, said that Michigan was the state Democrats should worry most about being flipped. Essentially, his argument was that Obama had an easy time against Mitt Romney in 2012 because of the auto bailout issue. “Some of the statements that Mitt Romney made, even though his father was governor there, almost disqualified him immediately in Michigan,” he said on MSNBC. “It’s a state that should be much closer than it has been in presidentials.”

Trump said: “We’ll win places that a lot of people say you’re not going to win, that as a Republican you can’t win. Michigan is a great example; nobody else will go to Michigan. We’re going to be encamped in Michigan because I think I can win it.”

Nate I think it’s hard to argue that Obama was helped so much by the auto bailout that the state would have otherwise been especially competitive. Obama won this state by 9.5 points in 2012, or a little less than six points better than he did nationally. That’s about what happened for Kerry in 2004, who won by 3.5 when Bush won by 2.5 points.

Also, Michigan is not just a state of autoworkers. Black voters represent an above-average share of the electorate. There are a lot of well-educated white voters around Detroit, or Lansing and Ann Arbor. Trump did very poorly in the primary in heavily Dutch Western Michigan, which is the real conservative base in the state.




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