Hillary Clinton’s primary wins in the South won’t help her in November
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The Republican Party is going nuts as Donald Trump racks up primary victories and delegates, making it increasingly likely he will secure the nomination against the will of the establishment.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s romp in South Carolina increases her chances of wrapping up her party’s nomination in March.
The problem is that she is winning the nomination by capturing the African-American vote in states she is bound to lose in the general election.
Democrat Hillary Clinton won a landslide victory in South
Carolina thanks to strong support among African-Americans, but Bernie
Sanders showed no signs of dropping out. WSJ's Shelby Holliday explains
where the Democratic race stands heading into Super Tuesday.
No amount of turnout by
minority voters in November is going to turn the solidly red states of
South Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, or Texas into blue states,
even though Clinton has won or is expected to win the primaries in
these states with crushing margins.The majority of Democratic voters in these states may be African-American or Latino, but white voters gravitate to the Republican Party and will deliver these states as usual to the Republican nominee.
And that nominee, thanks to his runaway popularity in the primaries, is likely to be Trump.
The problem for the Democrats is that Clinton’s prowess with minority voters won’t necessarily win her the big swing states that will push the Electoral College victory one way or the other — Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and some smaller ones.
It is precisely here that Trump’s appeal to white blue collar voters could tip the scales and turn many of these states red in 2016.
Going into Super Tuesday, Donald Trump is hoping his
support base-- voters who don’t have a college degree--will bring him
closer to the nomination. What are the long-term risks of relying so
heavily on this demographic? WSJ’s Jason Bellini reports.
Combine this with the
enthusiasm factor that is making Republican voter turnout higher than
usual in the primaries, while Democratic numbers are lagging, and you
have a plausible case for Trump, if he is the nominee, beating Clinton.Trump bragged in last week’s Republican debate in that he is expanding the base of Republican voters.
“But one thing I’m also going to do, I’m going to be getting — bringing a lot of people in who are Democrats, who are independents, and you’re seeing that with the polls, because if you look at anywhere, look at any of the elections, every single election, it has been record-setting,” he said, referring to the first four primaries. “I think I have something to do with that.”
Ironically, it is the white blue-collar workers who are responding to Sanders’s message of a rigged economy and oppressive inequality who could switch their allegiance to Trump instead of Clinton.
So the Democratic primaries may preponderantly favor the candidate who has less chance of beating Trump in the swing states in the general election, while the Republican primaries could result in a nominee who abjures Republican orthodoxy but may win the White House.
Not a very efficient system.
Super Tuesday may have more lessons for us. Perhaps the mainstream Republican consensus growing around Marco Rubio will propel him to a stronger showing against Trump and turn the primary contest into more of a race than it has been so far.
There is little question that Clinton will prevail in most of the Democratic contests and perhaps even run the table (with the exception, of course, of Vermont, Sanders’s home state).
Hillary Clinton heads into Super Tuesday with a victory
in South Carolina in her pocket and a number of endorsements from black
political and cultural leaders. That marks a significant change in her
campaign's relationship with the African-American electorate since her
presidential run in 2008.
Sanders says he will
continue his campaign until the convention in July, but his supporters
may start to lose interest when he no longer has a chance of winning the
nomination.This is another problem for nominee Clinton in the general election. The youthful supporters who flock to Sanders rallies and chant his stump speech along with him are likely to simply drop back out of politics, no matter how loyally Sanders backs Clinton and exhorts them to vote for her. They won’t show up in November.
The chief imponderable in the general election is the Trump factor, if he does indeed win the nomination.
Will Republicans reconcile themselves to this maverick and come out to vote for him in spite of reservations many of them have? Will Democrats who aren’t crazy about Clinton come out to vote simply to block Trump?
In fact, it may be the negative enthusiasm factor that drives voter turnout in November, as those who cannot stand the thought of Trump or Clinton in the White House come out to vote against these candidates.
Pollsters are preoccupied right now with the primary races and we won’t start to see reliable general election polling until the nominees are chosen.
In the meantime, poll trackers following favorability ratings for the two frontrunners find them running neck and neck — in unfavorable ratings!
The Huffpost Pollster, for instance, finds the average unfavorable ratings for Clinton in 369 polls from 40 pollsters to be 53.6%, with favorable ratings at only 40%.
Trump, for his part, currently registers a 57.6% unfavorable rating average in 103 polls from 18 pollsters, and a 36.1% favorable rating.
For what it’s worth, Huffpost Pollster gives Sanders a positive favorability rating — 49% favorable to 38.3% unfavorable — while Rubio comes up slightly negative — 40.4% unfavorable to 36.3% favorable.
Presuming, however, that the current frontrunners ultimately prevail, there is a chance that both of them will enter the general election campaign with highly negative approval ratings.
It’s a heckuva way to choose a president.
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