Now that Trump has unified his party, he's surging

[Ljube]

The Trumpster has offended so many groups. His voter coalition is simply not enough to gain a majority. His path in the EC to 270 is very very narrow (if he loses FL, it's over). There’s no way he will win. November the 8th will be his ultimate Waterloo.

Trump. Can't. Win. [Koolaid.gif]

[Ljube]

Setting aside the argument of how likely Trump is to win in November, Trump very clearly has not unified the Republican party; there are still prominent Republicans refusing to support him and his scores among Republicans, across the nation, are consistently far lower than Hillary's scores with Democrats (even though Hillary hasn't won the primary yet she's still consolidated Democrats more than Trump has consolidated Republicans, in other words). However, Trump does fare respectably well against Hillary with independents.

If Trump does win, it'll be because he blows her out with independents. A historically low result among Republicans for the Republican nominee is close to baked in at this point.

Trump. Can't. Win. [Koolaid.gif]

Suggesting Trump is likelier to win the general election than people assume because he was assumed to be an unlikely primary winner but still triumphed is like assuming that if you flip a fair coin and it turns up heads, heads are a likelier result than tails from here on out. Past coin flips do not affect future ones, and a candidate defying expectations once doesn't make them likelier to do so again.

The Republican Party hasn't unified completely around its presumptive nominee yet. The process is progressing faster than I expected, but is still far from finished.

Vosem, don't expect any holdouts in the end. The percentage of Republicans for Trump will actually be higher than Romney's, who was despised and rejected by the evangelicals.

[Ljube]

First of all, "evangelicals are intensely patriotic in a traditional way" is a meaningless statement. Patriotism is not a measurable quantity and there's also no definable distinction (that I can perceive, at least) between traditional and modern patriotism. Secondly, Trump's record on social issues is incredibly imperfect. Enough evangelicals are turned off by Trump's flip-flopping on abortion (never an issue for McCain, and one that Romney headed off at the pass by being strongly identified with his religion) that it's very hard for me to imagine him doing better than Romney among them.

Some evangelicals of course are for Trump (there were plenty of states in the primary where he won pluralities among them, which isn't the case for other groups), but there's a firm group of NeverTrumpies among them that will likely sit the election out or protest vote.

Vosem, the NeverTrump is a dying breed. There aren't any NeverTrump evangelicals, only the establishment types.