So Trump today appears significantly stronger in Pennsylvania than Romney was at the same point in the 2012 race. And indeed, Pennsylvania has for months seemed the best candidate for a Trump win in a big blue state. On the other hand, Pennsylvania has often seemed within the grasp of Republicans, but the last time a GOP presidential candidate actually won was in 1988. Unless there is a big shift in the race, it’s not a bad bet that Trump will end up losing, because Pennsylvania always slips away.
In Ohio, all the polls in the RealClearPolitics average are at least a month old. In the average, Clinton leads Trump by 1.4 points. At the same time in 2012, Obama led Romney by 1.8 points. That’s pretty close to today. Obama went on to win Ohio by 3 points.
The bottom line is that the Clinton-Trump numbers in some critically important states are more in line with the Obama-Romney race than they are with some sort of doomsday blowout suggested by the national poll numbers. And that suggests that after all the noise and drama and weeping and gnashing of teeth, Trump could be headed for a loss that looks, not like a party-ending calamity, but an ordinary Republican defeat. Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush might have lost in much the same way.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member