Prediction time: The Democrat Could Carry 46 States

[Jim Lane]

64. I completely agree with you.

The Democrat is a shoo-in in the situation hypothesized in the OP, namely a serious GOP split. If the election is Trump vs. Walker vs. Clinton or Trump vs. Walker vs. Sanders, the Democratic nominee wins easily. Heck, I'm a natural-born citizen over 35, and even though I've never held elective office, Trump vs. Walker vs. Lane is a Democratic win.

I don't expect a serious three-way campaign, though. No one but the two major party nominees will break 5% of the vote (the matching funds threshold). In that scenario, our biggest problem might be the complacency that you speak against. Trump, unlike a Cruz or a Romney, could put in play some of the "blue wall" states in the Rust Belt, like Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. A Republican who takes those states plus Ohio and holds all of Romney's 2012 states gets to precisely 270 electoral votes. This obviously doesn't mean Trump is a shoo-in -- merely that he could be much more competitive than many DUers seem to think.

Just as background, here are Obama's margins over Romney in the states I mentioned: Michigan, 9.5%; Ohio, 3.0%; Pennsylvania, 5.4%; Wisconsin, 7.0%. Those states could flip if there are enough white working-class voters who still feel economically insecure, who believe that their status hasn't improved all that much in eight years of a Democratic presidency, and who resent the establishments of both parties. I'm not even counting the racists because most of them are voting Republican in any event.

As an amusing possibility, suppose Trump wins all those states and, for good measure, even reverses Romney's 5.8% loss in Iowa. If there are enough angry Hispanics in Arizona to reverse Obama's 9.1% loss there, then the Democratic candidate wins the Presidency despite the Rust Belt defections.

My bottom line is that Trump has defied just about all the experts' predictions in getting as far as he has so far. I'm not writing off his chances of defying the predictions in the general election.