2020: Sen Ted Cruz/VP Mike Pence vs Frm Sec Hillary Clinton/Sen Tim Kaine

[Medal506]

In this very unlikely but interesting senarios President Trump decides not to run again. Mike Pence faces off Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Pence and Cruz are in a pretty dead heat race in Iowa with Pence being the front runner in the early polls and Kasich being a distant third behind Pence and Cruz while still leading New Hampshire after Pence in second and Cruz in third. Cruz wins Iowa, Pence drops out. Both Pence and Trump endorse Ted Cruz. Trump is still at only a 35 to 40 percent approval rating. Cruz wins the New Hampshire primary by a very thin margin and goes on to win South Carolina and California and steam rolls all the states in Super Tuesday except Vermont and Massachusetts which went to Kasich by comfortable margins. After Super Tuesday Cruz announced that he will select Vice President Mike Pence as his running mate in the general election and will keep him as Vice President if he wins the presidency. Kasich drops out and endorses Cruz. On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton runs for president a third time running on the platform that she was the real winner of the 2016 election and she should be in the White House instead of Trump and Trump is a failure and that she was right about evrything she said about Trump when she ran against her and she should have won. Clinton steam rolls almost all the states and her only serious competitor is once again Bernie Sanders who goes on again to lose the democratic nomination against Clinton only except this time he goes on to lose even worse than he did in 2016. Clinton becomes the democratic nominee and claims that since she was the real winner of the popular vote in 2016 she should be president right now instead of Trump. She goes on to claim not only she was the real winner of the presidency in 2016 but since Tim Kaine was her running mate he was also the real winner of the vice presidency and there fore she will pick tim Kaine as her running mate again and this time go on to not only win the popular vote but also win the electoral vote. Clinton's approval rating is around the same as it is right now.


Who wins. Post you maps down below.

[Liberalrocks]

So I know this forum hates Clinton but I do think she wins this one with confidence. Presuming no Russia fake news interference and no Comey news dropped on her days before the vote....

Having an actual 2016 hindsight electoral map as research focus, along with the pain of a loss. She would focus her campaign stops on the critical upper midwest 3 and make them ground zero for her electoral coalition. She would not focus on "expanding the map" nor put the time into North Carolina that she had in 2016. This would help Cruz hold the state. Cruz would likely hold Iowa and Ohio which I doubt she would target as not being critical to "270".  Arizona could go eithier way due to demographic change so I am giving it to her here by a razors edge proably similiar to 2016 Michigan margin.

Clinton Kaine (318) 50%
Cruz Pence (220) 46%
Third Party Other 4%