Trump Has a Path to 270 and Yes – His Election Roadmap Is Better Than Cruz’s

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has admitted that Trump has a path to victory. It may be a piece of cake, but he can win, given all the weaknesses of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Yes, Trump is also incredibly flawed, probably the weakest GOP candidate in recent memory, but voters see him as more forthright, he wasn’t under FBI investigation, he didn’t have a private email server that potentially leaked state secrets to foreign entities, and he didn’t lie about it. Clinton did all of those things, and she still has to unite the Bernie faction in the Democratic Party, which caused quite the outburst in Philadelphia. Those Sanders supporters could very well defect to a third party.

But let’s move on to how Chris Cillizza feels on the mapIn her article, she quotes Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns’ article on Trump’s 2016 electoral map:

Even as Mr. Trump has surged in national polls in recent weeks, veteran Republicans say his path to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win remains narrow — and could become even more uncertain. It now appears incredibly arduous for him to secure even a narrow Electoral College majority without defeating Hillary Clinton in the three biggest swing states: Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Cillizza is right to note that 2016 will be a challenge for any Republican against Clinton. Second, if Trump wants to win, he might want to reconsider trying to get New York and Michigan back into the mix and focus on Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida instead. He wins those states; he wins the election. Period:

The Democratic presidential candidate won 18 states plus the District of Columbia in each of the six elections between 1992 and 2012. Those states have a combined 242 electoral votes. The GOP candidate won 13 states in each of those six elections; those states have a combined 102 electoral votes. That so-called “Blue Wall” has almost nothing to do with Trump. So if Ted Cruz had been the Republican candidate in 2016, for example, his path would have been as narrow as the one Trump faces now. Could Cruz — or Marco Rubio — be more competitive in, say, Virginia or Colorado than Trump appears to be? Sure. But would Cruz be as competitive in Pennsylvania as Trump is today? Almost certainly not.

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This map gives Trump 273 electoral votes to Clinton’s 265. She wins. That’s not crazy, right?

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According to the indispensable RealClearPolitics, Florida (Trump with an average lead of 0.3 points) and Ohio (Clinton +0.8) are as close as they come. Pennsylvania is more problematic for Trump, as Clinton has a 4.4-point lead in the polls in that state.

So, some positives are that Trump is keeping Romney’s map to the left in 2012. Let’s throw out those key swing states — hello, Mr. President. Republicans were able to win Florida and Ohio. It’s Pennsylvania that worries me. It can be a cruel mistress — and Republicans haven’t won that state since 1988. Meanwhile, Democrats in the western part of the state seem to be having an epiphany because that part of the state has become more Republican — a lot more Republican.

Cillizza is quick to point out that it’s amazing that Trump still has this path to victory after everything that’s happened in his campaign. We’ll see what happens when recent polling data is released in the coming weeks, after Trump’s attack on the Gold Star mother. If he survives this, Election Night 2016 could be… engaging.