{"id":7963,"date":"2016-03-08T09:01:35","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T17:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/trumps-path-to-victory-working-class-whites\/"},"modified":"2016-03-08T09:01:35","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T17:01:35","slug":"trumps-path-to-victory-working-class-whites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/trumps-path-to-victory-working-class-whites\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s path to victory: Working-class whites"},"content":{"rendered":"

DENVER<\/strong> \u2014 Should he win the Republican nomination, Donald Trump\u2019s most plausible path to victory in the general election would be a GOP map unlike any in years. He\u2019d be relying on working class, largely white voters in states that have long been Democratic bastions in presidential contests, from Maine to Pennsylvania to Michigan.<\/p>\n

To make that work he\u2019d have to thread a narrow needle \u2014 not only holding on to those core supporters but also softening rhetoric that has alienated black and Latino voters and calming those in the GOP who vow to never vote for him.<\/p>\n

It could be tricky, but the past eight months have taught political professionals in both parties not to underestimate the man.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe attracts a different kind of voter,\u201d said GOP pollster Frank Luntz. \u201cIt\u2019s a completely different equation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has signaled he\u2019s already thinking about the general election, bragging that \u201cwe\u2019ve actually expanded the Republican Party\u201d and slamming Hillary Clinton as part of the political establishment that\u2019s to blame for the sour economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s been there for so long,\u201d Trump said after notching seven victories on Super Tuesday in states as diverse as Massachusetts and Alabama. \u201cI mean, if she hasn\u2019t straightened it out by now, she\u2019s not going to straighten it out in the next four years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has dominated a majority of Republican primaries by combining his celebrity and can-do demeanor with a message that once was off-limits in both parties \u2014 a full-throated demand to restrict both trade and immigration. That\u2019s now a potent mix for voters from any party who\u2019ve seen jobs vanish and wages stagnate in an increasingly globalized economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmigration and trade policy changes the winners and losers, and the people who are going to be in play are the ones who are the losers in that process,\u201d said Roy Beck of Numbers USA, which advocates limiting immigration. \u201cThis has the potential to turn out a lot of voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has boasted that he could win even Democratic strongholds like his home state of New York. Analysts say that\u2019s unlikely, and he may face a tough climb in more diverse or well-educated states like Colorado, Florida and Virginia that have traditionally been presidential battlegrounds.<\/p>\n

Instead, Trump may best appeal to the Rust Belt, from Pennsylvania through Wisconsin, an area that\u2019s been a bedrock of Democratic presidential victories but is reeling from job losses and still struggling to recover from the recession.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe path for Trump is through the Rust Belt,\u201d said Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network, a center-left group in Washington that studies the electorate. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean it can\u2019t get done, but he will have to do things that no one has ever done as a Republican.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump will also have to contend with basic mathematical realities of an electorate that has been favoring Democrats as it\u2019s become increasingly diverse.<\/p>\n

Though Trump\u2019s vowed he\u2019ll win Latinos, it\u2019s unlikely he\u2019d outdo Mitt Romney\u2019s performance with Hispanics in 2012, and he could probably count on only modest improvements among blacks. That might require him to win even more of the white vote to prevail in the election than the 63 percent Ronald Reagan captured in his 1984 re-election, when Reagan won 49 states.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to be battling on very different terrain if he\u2019s the nominee,\u201d said William Galston of the Brookings Institute.<\/p>\n

Finally, Trump would have to bridge divides with Republicans who say they won\u2019t vote for him because of what they see as his demagoguery, breaks from conservative thinking and his personal conduct. Romney, the party\u2019s most recent presidential nominee, has blasted him as a \u201cphony.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t tell you how many suburban Republicans Trump will lose to us, but he\u2019ll lose plenty,\u201d predicted Ed Rendell, former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, though he acknowledged that the billionaire developer also could pick up some union members who would otherwise vote Democratic. \u201cMy gut reaction is he\u2019ll lose more suburban independents than gain Reagan Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIt scares you a little bit because you just don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump supporters believe he\u2019s being underestimated again. Ed McMullen, Trump\u2019s South Carolina chairman, noted that the candidate had broad appeal in his state \u2014 winning women, college graduates and evangelicals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think clearly what happened with Mr. Trump was the message was not something that was only hitting one group,\u201d McMullen said. \u201cIt was not just angry white men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, said Democrats will have to use ads to blunt Trump\u2019s apparent strength with economically disaffected voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the challenges will be defining Trump around the economy,\u201d Lake said. \u201cThis is a guy who could win or implode.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

Follow Nicholas Riccardi on Twitter at https:\/\/twitter.com\/NickRiccardi .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DENVER \u2014 Should he win the Republican nomination, Donald Trump\u2019s most plausible path to victory in the general election would be a GOP map unlike any in years. He\u2019d be relying on working class, largely white voters in states that have long been Democratic bastions in presidential contests, from Maine to Pennsylvania to Michigan. To […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-7963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7963"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}