How will Trump fight in the general election?

[Happy_Lendervedder]

@BrainGlutton

With his fists. He’s still unclear on some of the basic concepts here.

@galen_ubal

I’d still bet money on Ms. Clinton.

Seriously, have you seen his tiny little fists? Very dainty.

[Saint_Cad]

@Hank_Beecher

He is promising black and Hispanic citizens that he will protect their children and their jobs from illegal immigrants,

Some of the most fervent anti-illegal immigrant people I’ve met are Hispanics in this country legally.

I think that if Trump can return to center without alienating the TeaBag base AND can make this a race of insider vs. outsider then he will probably win and win big in the EC.

[Hank_Beecher]

@GIGObuster

The ones that count, the very elections of those years.
The others got in combination the other half of the Hispanic vote. In any case the point stands, it was just a small fraction of a fraction of the Hispanics what you are talking about here, and I do know that there is a number of Hispanics that do fall for that. Still a minority of a minority.

But Hillary needs most of those voters to win, Trump only needs to convince a significant minority to put her into major trouble.

One that expects very naive minorities to fall for the ruse.

Oh I don’t know about that. Some consider the attempt to associate Trump with the KKK to be the ruse. As an example, check out the video that is currently the top result on YouTube for the search “Trump Supporter”. Trump will convincingly argue that the attacks against him are an attack against the unity and interests of Americans. Something like this has been brewing for a decade or two now, and the Democrats and media are totally unprepared for it, unlike Trump.

Not going to work for most of the minorities or women.

He doesn’t need most of them though, he just needs a little more than Romney got, or even to hold steady while driving more whites the polls.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2016/02/25/poll-trumps-negatives-among-hispanics-rise-worst-in-gop-field/

Strongly negative views of Trump have intensified over the past seven months, as the New York billionaire has repeatedly pressed his call to build a wall along the length of the U.S.-Mexico border and seek to deport undocumented immigrants currently residing in the country.

Today, 8 in 10 Hispanic voters have an unfavorable view of Trump. That includes more than 7 in 10 who have a “very unfavorable” impression of him, which is more than double the percentage of any other major candidate.

Those findings compare with a Univision survey taken around the time of Trump’s announcement last summer, when just more than 7 in 10 had a negative view of him and fewer than 6 in 10 said they had a “very unfavorable” impression

These numbers are very similar to Trump’s unfavorability numbers among Republicans at the beginning of his campaign:

How Trump Did It: It looks improvisational, but he planned this run for years, making a pipe dream look like a prophecy.

That the media saturation was driven by controversies that led to widespread condemnation of Trump in the mainstream press and by pillars of the Republican Party didn’t matter to Trump. His team knew that the more Republican voters got to see of Trump the politician, the more they would like him.

They knew because they’d studied the polls.

When Trump first surged to the top of the Republican pack just weeks after his announcement, pundits pointed to Trump’s terrible favorability numbers to argue that his support had a hard ceiling and that other candidates would overtake him when the sprawling 17-member Republican field thinned. Indeed, Trump walked into the contest with a poll showing only 16 percent of Republicans viewed him favorably while 65 percent viewed him unfavorably.

But when Trump touched off controversy, his favorability skyrocketed, and by mid-July that same ABC/Washington Post poll found that 57 percent of Republicans viewed him favorably.

It was an unprecedented jump. “I’ve never seen a candidate who’s so well-known who was able to suddenly turn around people’s opinions of him,” Monmouth University’s director of polling, Patrick Murray, told Politico last summer.
Pollsters were dumbfounded. Trump wasn’t. He had been testing his ability to turn his favorability numbers around for four months already. His team studied a PPP poll from February 2014 that showed Trump’s favorability rating 21 points underwater with Iowa Republicans. But by April, as he made appearances and courted local politicians while testing the waters ahead of a formal announcement, he had pulled even.
Trump’s team, said one insider, knew that “once you approached the national media it would work that way as well.”
And it has.

[Saint_Cad]

@Hank_Beecher

He is promising black and Hispanic citizens that he will protect their children and their jobs from illegal immigrants,

Some of the most fervent anti-illegal immigrant people I’ve met are Hispanics in this country legally.

I think that if Trump can return to center without alienating the TeaBag base AND can make this a race of insider vs. outsider then he will probably win and win big in the EC.

[Richard_Parker]

@Saint_Cad

Some of the most fervent anti-illegal immigrant people I’ve met are Hispanics in this country legally.

Well, yeah. One of them is named Ted Cruz.

[LSLGuy]

@Saint_Cad

Some of the most fervent anti-illegal immigrant people I’ve met are Hispanics in this country legally.

I think that if Trump can return to center without alienating the TeaBag base AND can make this a race of insider vs. outsider then he will probably win and win big in the EC.

@Saint_Cad

Some of the most fervent anti-illegal immigrant people I’ve met are Hispanics in this country legally.

I think that if Trump can return to center without alienating the TeaBag base AND can make this a race of insider vs. outsider then he will probably win and win big in the EC.

There seems to be an echo in here.

[GIGObuster]

@Hank_Beecher

But Hillary needs most of those voters to win, Trump only needs to convince a significant minority to put her into major trouble.

It is still more likely that there is going to be a significant number of Republicans that will never vote for Trump (Hello Mr. Romney!)

[GIGObuster]

You are also missing the point and the evidence, what Nevada showed is that the Hispanics voting for him were really almost insignificant in number.

[Hank_Beecher]

@GIGObuster

It is still more likely that there is going to be a significant number of Republicans that will never vote for Trump (Hello Mr. Romney!)

Which will be exceeded by the number of people the Trump movement entices to the polls with the opportunity to vote in an outsider, and shake up politics-as-usual, in a way not seen in generations.

[Hank_Beecher]

@GIGObuster

You are also missing the point and the evidence, what Nevada showed is that the Hispanics voting for him were really almost insignificant in number.

No, I am not. It was presented as evidence that the attempts to paint him as a bigot are faltering among GOP voters.

[Thing_Fish]

@Hank_Beecher

Which will be exceeded by the number of people the Trump movement entices to the polls with the opportunity to vote in an outsider, and shake up politics-as-usual, in a way not seen in generations.

He’s getting 34% of the GOP vote. Sure, Republican turnout is up, but it’s not at all clear that the number of people registering Republican to vote for Trump is larger than the number registering Republican to vote against him.

@Hank_Beecher

No, I am not. It was presented as evidence that the attempts to paint him as a bigot are faltering among GOP voters.

That’s because GOP voters don’t actually view bigotry as a bad thing. In this way they differ from regular Americans.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Hank_Beecher

What the OP said plus:

He won’t be a good target for the ammunition the left has rehearsed over the last half century to use against our traditional common varieties of xenophobes. In response to being attacked as a bigot, he will present a multi-racial nativism, Pat Buchanan and Obama all at once, and tell you he loves you very much, and will be your president and bring more jobs than anyone God created, no matter what race or religion you are, as long as you are an American, or are here legally. He will respond to accusations of racism with his own accusations that his opponent makes promises to minorities in order to get elected, but never keeps her word like she does to her Wall Street donors. He will claim that what minorities really need are jobs and a secure border, and he will promise to deliver just that. This will work to a degree, maybe well enough to win, but the effect will be limited, even as it’s introduction of strong multi-racial nativism into mainstream use changes the game. Someone will come along later and do it way better than Trump.

He will quickly evolve into the most pro-choice friendly candidate that can plausibly still get votes from pro-life motivated voters. Clinton’s hard principled stance on abortion rights gives him lots of room. He will continue to say that he is personally against abortions but will hint that he won’t do anything to further restrict it, and keep saying nice things about Planned Parenthood. Pro-lifers will vote for him because they know Hillary won’t compromise on this, and so they will vote for Trump as the worst of two bad options. And he will gain some moderate pro-choice voters in the process.

What Hank and the OP said PLUS we’ve just gone nucking futz and anything could fucking happen. This was all just a big joke until Tuesday, then it got serious. Is it too late to get Mitt Romney back in the race?

[GIGObuster]

@Hank_Beecher

No, I am not. It was presented as evidence that the attempts to paint him as a bigot are faltering among GOP voters.

Well then, by the numbers, I get that minorities are not voting much for the GOP, how is that **not **faltering?

[GIGObuster]

@Hank_Beecher

Which will be exceeded by the number of people the Trump movement entices to the polls with the opportunity to vote in an outsider, and shake up politics-as-usual, in a way not seen in generations.

As I pointed in another thread you must think that magically the supporters of Trump that were counted and predicted to show for the primaries were and are not being counted properly in the match up polls.

Because as it was pointed many times before the numbers in the match up polls are still in favor of Clinton, and have been since they began polling for primaries and match ups.

[Deeg]

Lots of interesting comments. I think the OP has a lot of good things in it. I’m a bit concerned about Trump; it’s impossible for me to believe he’s got a remote chance of winning but I thought the same thing six months ago.

One issue is that Trump attracts liberal voters. There was a Boston Globe article a few days ago that said he got a lot of support from union members (50% of members?), who traditional vote Democrat. Its hard for me to believe that HRC could attract any significant number of Republican voters to counteract that.

[Hank_Beecher]

@GIGObuster

As I pointed in another thread you must think that magically the supporters of Trump that were counted and predicted to show for the primaries were and are not being counted properly in the match up polls.

Because as it was pointed many times before the numbers in the match up polls are still in favor of Clinton, and have been since they began polling for primaries and match ups.

Trump hasn’t even starting campaigning against Clinton yet. All of these attacks from establishment GOP figures are going to help him steal voters from her.

[Nonsuch]

@Hank_Beecher

Which will be exceeded by the number of people the Trump movement entices to the polls with the opportunity to vote in an outsider, and shake up politics-as-usual, in a way not seen in generations.

As was brought up in a similar thread regarding Bernie Sanders, the idea of winning an election by bringing large numbers of new voters to the polls is usually losers’ talk. You aren’t kidding when you say “in a way not seen in generations,” because there really is no modern precedent for the kind of nonvoter mobilization it would take to propel Trump to victory in this way. I don’t see evidence that such a movement is in the offing. I really don’t think there are that many people sitting on the sidelines waiting for the right candidate to finally motivate them to vent their disgust at the polls.

I’m not saying to dismiss Trump’s chances. He’s defied expectations up to now. But while anger at the establishment may be more visible right now, I don’t think it’s nearly as endemic as the combination of frothing GOP primary voters and belligerent Bernheads makes it appear. As Vox notes today, candidates who secure their party’s nomination without securing its united support tend to go down in flames; it sends the message to low-information, non-committed voters that the candidate is a risky bet.

The bet on whether Trump can win is really a bet on whether the electorate is considerably angrier and more desperate for change than before, not just a little bit but historically so. And I don’t think it is; we’re not Russia in 1917. Trump is tapping into a loud minority who are enjoying a presidential candidate who says and thinks the same things they do — which frankly is disturbing enough.

[GIGObuster]

@Hank_Beecher

Trump hasn’t even starting campaigning against Clinton yet. All of these attacks from establishment GOP figures are going to help him steal voters from her.

It does not work that way, you are assuming that the same will not happen the other way. Clinton has not started campaigning against Trump either, and you are still trying to deny that Romney and others are not evidence of the reverse of what you are expecting, what we are seeing is already a significant loss of Republican support for Trump.

[Deeg]

@Nonsuch

As was brought up in a similar thread regarding Bernie Sanders, the idea of winning an election by bringing large numbers of new voters to the polls is usually losers’ talk. You aren’t kidding when you say “in a way not seen in generations,” because there really is no modern precedent for the kind of nonvoter mobilization it would take to propel Trump to victory in this way. I don’t see evidence that such a movement is in the offing.

What do you make of the highest numbers ever seen for Republican primaries? Normally I’d agree with you but right now Trump is making a mockery of expectations.

[Nonsuch]

@Deeg

What do you make of the highest numbers ever seen for Republican primaries? Normally I’d agree with you but right now Trump is making a mockery of expectations.

Democratic Party primary turnout in 2008 also broke records — but Obama’s eventual victory, while decisive, was hardly a shutout, and no great surprise given the unpopularity of the incumbent party and the lousy state of the economy, then at the beginning of the recession. We’re a ways away from concluding that any kind of historic realignment is in progress.