What to expect if The Donald doesn’t change course, and what to expect if he does. Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-election-things-you-should-know-213875#ixzz48Ld19944 Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

1. 5 Things You Need to Know About the
Coming
Trump vs. Clinton Showdown

2. • Bernie Sanders fans and #NeverTrumpers might not be ready to discuss a
Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump general election matchup, but the rest
of the political world is—and the picture right now looks pretty grim for
the Republicans.
• It didn’t necessarily have to turn out this way. There’s good reason to think
that, had the Republicans run a “generic” candidate, the GOP would have
had an electoral edge in 2016. But Trump is anything but generic, with
historic unfavorables that surpass even Clinton’s significant ones—and the
math shows that Clinton, as unpopular as she is, could potentially be the
first candidate since 1984 to win the two-party popular vote by more than
10 percentage points.
• That said, we’re six months out from Election Day—plenty of time for
more Trump surprises in an election year already riddled with them.
• And with that, here are 5 points to keep in mind as we kick off the main
campaign—from what to expect if Trump doesn’t change course, to what
to consider if he does.

3. A generic Republican might have been a favorite for
the white house Showdown

4. • Way back in early 2015, there were at least two major reasons to think the GOP would
have a leg up in a presidential contest. For one, fundamental factors such as the economy
and the president’s approval rating were operating in the Republicans’ favor. The
incumbent president’s party typically pays a price for economic troubles, and, while far
better than just a few years earlier, in 2015 the economy was not exactly roaring. Average
annual growth from 2013 to 2015 was only about 2 percent, compared to an average
annual growth rate of more than 3 percent since World War II. On top of that, President
Barack Obama’s approval rating was about 45 percent at the end of 2015, which, based
on past elections, would give a slim edge to the GOP in a two-party presidential contest.
• Second, parties almost never win three straight White House terms. Since Harry Truman’s
time, only the Republicans have managed to accomplish this feat—and this just once,
when George H.W. Bush won in 1988 after Ronald Reagan’s two terms in office.
• The numbers are a little different in 2016: Obama’s approval rating sits around 50
percent, and the economy remains decent enough that Americans feel relatively good
about it—similar to how they felt before the Great Recession hit. But neither Obama’s job
performance rating nor economic growth are high enough to give a significant edge to
the Democrats, especially when coupled with the fact that the nominees are competing
for an open seat (incumbents usually have an advantage). In fact, political scientist John
Sides and his colleagues built a probability model based on those three factors that
suggests a generic edge for the Republican nominee in the fall.
• With that said, this year’s Republican nominee is not a generic nominee—and that
changes everything.

5. 2. In a Clinton vs. Trump race, Clinton begins as
the favorite.

6. • One would not expect a candidate with a -12 net favorability rating to enter a general election campaign as the favored competitor. But
Hillary Clinton will indeed begin the long march toward November as the favorite. What Clinton needed is an opponent who is even
more disliked by the public than she is, and Donald Trump is just what her doctor ordered: Trump’s net favorability is currently -24
according to HuffPost Pollster’s polling average. We appear to be headed for a matchup between perhaps the two most loathed general
election candidates in modern U.S. political history.
• Yes, it’s true that Trump is an unprecedented political figure who has been consistently underestimated, only to remarkably end up in
his current position as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. But, in reaching that elevated standing Trump has also alienated
large swaths of key constituencies, including many Republicans. His unprecedented unpopularity will likely have serious, negative
consequences for his electoral chances.
• The worst number for Trump may be his rating among women. At the start of April, Gallup found that 70 percent of women held an
unfavorable view of the real estate mogul, compared to 58 percent of men. While more women vote Democratic than Republican—a
partisan gender gap that has existed in every presidential election dating back to 1980—women will likely form a slight majority of the
electorate in November, just as they have for decades, so they are still a constituency that Trump should worry about—a lot. And,
considering Trump’s hits on Clinton for “playing the woman’s card”—which Clinton happily embraced in a fundraising appeal—his
gendered language and attacks probably aren’t going away. While Trump’s campaign believes this will help him improve his support
among white women, who have backed all GOP nominees since 1996, that strategy is a bit of a gamble, and could well backfire.
• And then there are Hispanic voters, who appear to abhor Trump. The research firm Latino Decisions recently found Trump’s net
favorability among Latinos to be -78 percent, while Hillary Clinton’s is +29 percent. To put Trump’s numbers into perspective within his
party, Ted Cruz’s net favorability was -16 percent, and John Kasich’s was -10 percent. Although Hispanic voters will be heavily
concentrated in uncompetitive California and Texas, they will be very important in at least three swing states: Colorado (where
Hispanics made up 14 percent of the state’s 2012 electorate), Florida (17 percent) and Nevada (19 percent). In light of how Trump is
viewed by this demographic group, it’s not difficult to imagine Clinton winning 80 percent of Latinos after Obama won 71 percent in
2012. And, most projections expect Latinos to make up more of the electorate than they did in 2012, when they comprised 10 percent
of all voters. That assumption is based partly on the growing Latino population, but also on the fact that hatred of Trump may motivate
more Hispanics to register to vote and turn out to the polls.
• Lastly, party unity is likely to be a bigger problem for Trump than Clinton. There’s little question that #NeverTrump is a larger force
within the GOP than the anti-Clinton contingent is within the Democratic Party. Take the April 26 Pennsylvania primary as an example.
Based on the exit poll, 84 percent of Democrats said they would definitely or probably vote for Clinton if she won the Democratic
nomination, and 11 percent said they would be “scared” if Clinton became president. Overall, 69 percent of Democrats felt theClinton-
Sanders contest had energized the party while 26 percent felt it had divided Democrats. Contrast those numbers to views of
Republicans in the Keystone State: Only 39 percent felt the GOP campaign had energized the party while 58 percent felt it haddivided
Republicans. In total, 77 percent said they would definitely or probably vote for Trump in the general election, and 22 percent said they
would be “scared” if he became president. Of course, there is ample time for Trump to bring anti-Trump Republicans back into the fold,
and his favorability numbers among party members have improved in recent weeks. Still, via Gallup, his net favorable rating among
Republicans was +29 as of May 5 versus +44 for Clinton among Democrats.
• These factors, coupled with Clinton’s healthy lead over Trump in early horserace polling, led the Crystal Ball to make Clinton a large
favorite in our first Clinton-Trump Electoral College map, in which we give Clinton a 347 to 191 edge in the electoral vote. (Many
people, including some Republicans, have told us they believe this projection is actually too kind to Trump.)

7. 3. Recent Presidential Elections have been
relatively close in the popular vote. This one might
NOT be.

8. • Dating back to 1988, seven straight White House contests have been decided by less than 10
percentage points in the two-party popular vote. This competitive streak matches the
country’s previous record, which occurred from 1876 to 1900.
• We at the Crystal Ball have been fairly adamant that it will be hard for either party to win
more than 55 percent of the two-party vote in 2016, in part because of election
fundamentals—economic conditions and the incumbent president’s approval rating—and
because of the political polarization that exists in the country today. Months of anti-Clinton
ads and presidential campaigning are likely to push many recalcitrant Republicans toward
backing their party’s nominee, improving his electoral chances.
• However, it’s possible that Clinton could break this competitive streak and win by a little
more than 10 points—particularly if Trump struggles to unite his party around him, continues
to poll terribly with nonwhite voters, and remains weaker than Mitt Romney’s 2012 support
level among whites, particularly white women. Here’s some basic demographic math: Take
the 2012 exit poll as a starting point and calculate the two-party vote based off those voting
percentages. That year, the electorate was 72 percent White, 13 percent African American,
10 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Asian and 2 percent something else. Now, add in the
assumption that the electorate will be slightly more nonwhite in 2016, with an uptick in
Latino vote share to 12 percent and Asian to 4 percent, and with Blacks falling to 12 percent
without Obama on the ticket. If Trump performs about three points worse among white
voters than Romney did in the two-party vote, perhaps as a result of losing some highly
educated suburbanites, while Clinton wins four out of every five Latino votes because of
Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric, that could produce the conditions for Clinton to win the
two-party popular vote by just a little bit more than 10 points.

9. 4. The down-ballot consequences
may be grim for Republicans.

10. • In 2014, Republican Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Brian Sandoval of Nevada each won reelection and
dramatically increased their share of the vote from their initial victories four years earlier. Kasich went
from 49 percent in 2010 to 64 percent, and Sandoval jumped from 53 percent to 71 percent. Yet, while
their vote share increased, their actual number of votes did not: Kasich added just about 56,000 votes to
his total (out of about 3 million cast), while Sandoval added just about 4,000 votes (out of about 547,000
cast). Why? Because, the second time around, these governors’ Democratic opponents were so
uninspiring that Democrats didn’t show up to vote. (Both Sandoval’s and Kasich’s 2014 opponents won
about half the total votes of their predecessors.) And this led to a down-ballot disaster: In 2014,
Democrats got blown out in every statewide race in Ohio, and Nevada Democrats surprisingly lost all the
statewide offices in Nevada, as well as control of the state legislature.
• We bring this example up to note that there’s reason to be skeptical of Republican efforts to insulate
themselves from the top of their own ticket. Yes, gubernatorial elections are different than presidential
elections, and midterm turnout is naturally lower than presidential-year turnout. But it’s not crazy to
envision a similar situation unfolding at the national level. If Trump’s lackluster numbers remain poor, we
could see a notable drop in Republican turnout—which would threaten GOP congressional candidates in
key states and districts.
• Given the increasing amount of straight-ticket voting, where voters pick the same party for president and
for congressional races, and because the most competitive Senate races this year are mostly taking place
in presidential swing states, it seems likely that the party that wins the White House will also win the
Senate. It’s possible that the House could come into play, but Republicans have a nice 30-seat cushion;
moreover, House Democrats have failed to recruit decent candidates in some potentially vulnerable GOP
seats.
• And that’s just if turnout remains pretty average.
• If Republican turnout craters because of Trump, the damage to the GOP could be extreme, and many
Democrats who look unelectable today could find themselves in office next year. Democrats might win
Senate seats that the Crystal Ball currently see as leaning toward Republicans, such as Arizona and
Missouri, creating opportunities for a large majority in the upper chamber. And in the House, depressed
GOP turnout could swing the House, unseating Republicans thought to be safe and ushering in a number
“accidental congressmen.”

11. 5. If the numbers change, the outlook
needs to change.

12. • It’s clear that most analysts, ourselves included, did not take Trump’s candidacy nearly as seriously as we should have
when he announced it back in June 2015. Once his numbers among Republicans improved and he held polling leads
for months—far longer than some shooting star candidates did in 2012—observers should have recalibrated their
expectations and given Trump more credence as a candidate. But, if you look back at polling at the start of his
campaign, there were legitimate reasons to doubt Trump.
• For one, Trump had flirted with running several times before, and it didn’t seem at all certain that he would be in the
race for the long haul. Additionally, Trump’s favorability among Republicans was very weak: Quinnipiac University
found it at 34 percent favorable/52 percent unfavorable in late May 2015 and Monmouth University found a 20
percent /55 percent split in June, right before Trump entered the race. Things got complicated when Trump quickly
turned those numbers around and shot up the charts in Republican primary polling. Analysts didn’t make a mistake in
pointing out Trump’s poor numbers when he entered the race; instead, our collective mistake was being too slow to
adjust when the numbers did change and his durable level of appeal became apparent.
• As much as many like to dump on polls, a sneaky story of this election season is that, taken together, the polls have
been fairly decent. The many national polls that showed Trump leading throughout 2015 accurately picked up on his
solid support from at least a plurality of Republican primary voters. And while national polls severely undersold
Bernie Sanders’ potential—which was understandable considering that he was not a true national figure when he
announced his candidacy—they consistently showed Clinton with a big lead, and she continues to lead Sanders by 14
points in the aggregate Democratic popular vote.
• On the state level, 19 primary states had enough polling data to allow for HuffPost Pollster to create a polling average
for both the Democratic and Republican contests. Of those 38 total primaries, the leader in the polling average won
the most votes in 35 of them, the only exceptions being the Indiana and Michigan Democratic primaries (Sanders
won both after significantly trailing in polls) and the Oklahoma Republican primary (where a big Trump lead turned
into a comfortable Cruz win). Granted, several other poll averages were off by a significant amount—particularly on
the Democratic side—but by and large the polls got the winners right.
• Therein lies a lesson for the general election, especially because we’re at the point where these surveys are starting
to have some predictive value for November: If the numbers start to change, pay attention. Trump’s horserace
numbers against Hillary Clinton, both nationally and at the state level, might be poor today, and it might be unlikely
that he’ll have as much success improving those numbers with a general election audience as he did with Republicans
alone—but we should not rule this possibility out. And if the numbers do change in a consistent way across several
reputable polls, we need to write a new narrative.