Election Update: Clinton’s Lead Is As Safe As Kerry’s Was In 2004 - Nate Silver

[heresAthingdotcom]

20. this is not 2004...

I like to look at demographics...

If Democrats are able to retain high levels of support among voters of color in 2016 as they did in 2012, then they will more easily win battleground states such as Virginia, where Democrats’ margin of victory would increase by more than one-third. More importantly, Democrats could win back some states they lost in 2012, including North Carolina.

Republicans will need to secure a rising level of support among voters of color in order to compete in key states in 2016. In some states, such as Florida, restoring party preferences to their 2004 levels would enable the GOP to narrowly win back states they lost in 2012 but had won in previous elections. However, in order to win back other key states that the GOP won in 2004, such as Ohio and Nevada, the GOP would need to exceed the share of support it received from voters of color in 2004.

From North Carolina to Arizona, populations of color are becoming a noticeably larger share of the electorate. In Arizona, voters of color made up 32.4 percent of all eligible voters in 2012. By 2016, this share will reach 35.6 percent, with Latinos making up 23 percent of the Arizona electorate alone. In other states, voters of color have not reached the point of being a significant share of the overall electorate, but they will still represent the majority of the net increase in eligible voters between 2012 and 2016. In Pennsylvania, for example, people of color made up 17 percent of the electorate in 2012 and will rise to 19.2 percent by 2016.The growth of this electorate represents 87 percent of the net increase in eligible voters in the state and therefore may prove to be influential in close presidential and U.S. Senate races in 2016.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/report/2015/01/06/101605/the-changing-face-of-americas-electorate/

The electorate that voted for President Obama in 2012 looked significantly different from the one that elected George W. Bush for his first term at the beginning of the century. In 2012, the share of minorities among eligible voters was 29 percent, up from 23 percent in 2000 (above). If that doesn’t seem like a significant difference, consider this: In 2000, only eight states and the District of Columbia had higher than a 30 percent share of minority voters; In 2012, the number of such states grew to 17 (plus D.C.). With each election year, non-white political clout is strengthening, in some states more than others.

This election year, a complex set of demographic factors are at play. Latino voters, in particular, have reached record high numbers. Single women, too, may have considerable political sway this time around. On the flip side, the fact that many low-income Americans are not feeling the economic recovery could depress voter enthusiasm, as Anna Greenberg, a political consultant at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, noted.

These factors are important to keep in mind while looking at the six hypothetical scenarios below, which the researchers designed to estimate the direction of the popular and the electoral college votes in this election:

Scenarios A, B, and C assume that voters of each age group, race, and state will show roughly the same turnout rates and partisan preferences as they did in 2012, 2008, and 2004, respectively.
The next three are modifications of scenario A:

Scenario D, or the “maximum minority turnout” scenario assumes that Hispanics and Asians will turn out to vote at the same rate as their white counterparts did in 2012.
Scenario E assumes that a higher share of Hispanics, Asians, and other “new minorities” will support the GOP within all age groups and states than they did in 2012.
Scenario F is what Brookings’ Frey, who co-authored the report, calls the “Donald Trump Dream” scenario. In this one, a higher share of white voters will support the Republican candidate than they did in 2012.
The graph below shows the resulting differences in the share of popular votes between the two parties for each of the above scenarios in the 2016 presidential election. The “Donald Trump Dream”—scenario F— is the only one that would lead to a clear Republican win in 2016. Even scenario C, which mirrors the voting patterns of the 2004 election Bush won, doesn’t favor the GOP here. That said, Democrats would win the popular vote in this scenario by only a hair—the margin of victory here would be even lower than what it was for Bush in 2000.

http://www.citylab.com/politics/2016/02/demography-favors-the-democrats/470937/

The only scenario out of the 6 that is beneficial to Mr. Trump is F..... where a higher number of white voters support Trump...

Hillary has 5 ways of winning and Trump only 1....