New Jersey goes Republican?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

ANYTHING could happen.  Up is down.  Black is white.  The Cubs are 7 1/2 games ahead in first place.

Anyone who says "Trump/Clinton can can't possibly win X" is being foolish.  Here are your states out of play:

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

The thing about the northeast is Trump lacks the GOP's traditional weaknesses, and Trump's negatives are not that bad there.

The thing about the southeast is evangelicals hate Trump, setting up the potential for a Black Belt / Bible Belt coalition to elect Hillary.

The thing about the Midwest is it's a confluence of Rust Belt anger and distaste for everything Trump stands for.

The thing about the West is Hillary is the she-devil, but Trump's an eminent-domain-loving anti-libertarian.

It's a totally new ballgame.  Don't put much stock into the polls right now.  There's too much noise and not enough real information.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

The Cubs are 7 1/2 games ahead in first place.

this isn't the best sporting analogy that you could have used; with the team that the Cubs have they should be winning!  Leicester City winning the premier league however...

Murica.

Actually, I posed the question on Facebook back in December, of which was more likely to happen:
1. Trump wins the GOP nomination
2. Leicester City wins the Premier League

We all had a great laugh at the preposterousness of both.  My Liverpool supporter friends were like, "NO WAY the Foxes even finish top 4, and LFC is going to the Champions League! YNWA!!!!!"

LOL.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

If ever a Republican was going to win NJ in a reasonably close election, it would be 2004, and Bush still lost it by 7 points.

Right now the non-white coalition of voters in NJ is simply too much for a Republican presidential candidate to overcome in a Northern state, where the white vote is competitive.  A Democrat is never going to get 20-25% of the white vote in NJ, which is how Republicans overcome these minority coalitions in the South. 

I suppose it could happen in a 8-10 point Trump blowout where Trumps makes inroads with Latinos, but that just isn't happening.

You're thinking of Trump like he's a Republican.  You're thinking of this like it's an ordinary campaign, where Hillary and the Democrats can target ads at minorities about the terrible things Trump has said and get them to come out and vote against him.  This won't work against Trump.  Trump's campaign is national, it's using the media to his advantage, and it's a totally different thing.  Do not underestimate the way the Trump campaign can manipulate the media and the voting public.

Nothing is off the table.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

A aviation tragedy happens, a passenger flight goes down in the Mediterranean, and what is the media talking about?  Donald Trump's tweet about it.  His reprehensible hot take, calling it a terrorist attack on the basis of zero evidence.

The man is a genius, or rather the men running this campaign are.  Everyone is talking about Trump, pumping their fists in the air.  "This guy means action.  He's gonna tell it like it is, and do something!"

And not a single dollar was spent on advertising.  And the publicity is national, not targeted at battleground states, not targeted at demographic groups.  Everyone, everywhere, all Trump, all the time.  Thank you, media.

This is why New Jersey is in play.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Trump is certainly an unconventional Republican candidate, but as we can see with overtures he's been making lately, ultimately he is going to represent the Republican Party.  And we're now seeing that in national polls where Republicans have consolidated.

I think Latino voters will be extra motivated to vote against Trump.  But even if they aren't, even if they turnout and vote at normal rates for Hillary, it's more than enough to keep NJ blue.  

That isn't to say that Trump can't win the overall election; he most certainly can.  It's just to say that he can't win NJ except in a landslide.

I think - and I could be totally wrong - that we're going to see a really weird map.  And that the polls right now are noisy, and things haven't come into focus yet.  I think Trump is going to get stronger in the northeast, weaker in the south, and it's going to be a knockout brawl in the midwest.  Trump isn't going to do a "battleground" strategy, because he'll be on viewscreens EVERYWHERE.  He'll be forcing Hillary to devote time and energy in places no Democrat should have to.

That isn't to say Trump is going to win.  I think he's going to lose.  But it's gonna be weird.  Like Trump winning NJ and losing GA (and the general) kinda weird.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

The Cubs are 7 1/2 games ahead in first place.

this isn't the best sporting analogy that you could have used; with the team that the Cubs have they should be winning!  Leicester City winning the premier league however...

Murica.

Actually, I posed the question on Facebook back in December, of which was more likely to happen:
1. Trump wins the GOP nomination
2. Leicester City wins the Premier League

We all had a great laugh at the preposterousness of both.  My Liverpool supporter friends were like, "NO WAY the Foxes even finish top 4, and LFC is going to the Champions League! YNWA!!!!!"

LOL.

Screenshots or GTFO.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

NJ-It will probably stay the same as 2012(58-41%) or swing or trend dem very sightly

The last bastion of Republican majority support in NJ comes from citizens ages 65 and up. All the other age groups are pretty overwhelmingly Democratic (60%+). The voters that are keeping NJ from NY-style blowouts are literally dying off and within 8 - 10 years will no longer influence NJ voting patterns much at all.

I'd say it trends even more Democratic this year.

You are making the mistake of thinking of Donald Trump as a Republican.  The GOP is dead, at least in terms of an organization that produces Presidents.  Donald Trump played them.  Like a violin.  The "Mexicans are rapists" remarks and tiny-words act in the primaries?  That's going away.  He's already starting to sound like he stepped out of a think tank.  He will walk into the first debate with Hillary using a college-level vocabulary and a mastery of policy positions, and bury the former Secretary.

You think Donald Trump is an idiot?  He's going to wipe the floor with Clinton.  Her handlers are going to prepare her for the old Donald, and when the new Donald shows up, she'll be left going "dur, dur, dur, dur, dur...."

In the ensuing media frenzy, not only will Donald Trump be publicized in every news outlet 24/7, but the voting population will have forgotten all about his late-2015 antics.

That's how he wins New Jersey.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

You really have taken on this whole "Trump is going to defy all odds" angle lately. Anyway, I'm going to go with what decades of reliable trends have shown and not a seriously flimsy hypothetical scenario that in some ways suggests that Trump is a political messiah. Personally, I think you need to balance these theories with actual data.

It's not that Trump is going to defy all the odds, it's that Trump is playing with a completely different deck.  I guarantee you right now, there are people across the liberal northeast who are already looking at Trump going, "you know, he's starting to look ok."

Trump's not a Republican.  He just exploited the GOP to gain a nomination.  Now that that's out of the way, you're going to see a very different candidate.  These threads are going to look silly in September.