In the past week, two themes have emerged:
One, Hillary Clinton is very likely to win the 2016 Presidential election.
Two, because of the current polarized political climate, Hillary Clinton is extremely unlikely to win the Electoral College in a blowout a la LBJ in 1964.
Intuitively, it makes sense. Trump is highly disliked, and yet a significant number of people are going to vote for him simply because he’s Not Hillary Clinton and represents the only opportunity to stop her. In fact, according to the CNN poll released yesterday, 50% of Trump supporters say they’re supporting Trump mostly in opposition to Clinton. 24% of self-described conservatives have an unfavorable opinion of Trump according to the poll.
The empty seats at the RNC spoke volumes: a lot of Republicans don’t like Trump, but will support him because he’s the only realistic alternative to Hillary Clinton. Thus Trump’s support is built on a house of cards, relying on the support of a large number of people who don’t particularly like him, but will vote for him anyway. The conventional wisdom suggests that this polarization will result in Trump keeping his losing margin in the popular vote and the Electoral College respectable.
So, yes, it’s fair to say that Hillary Clinton won’t win in a 1964-style blowout. But here’s the possibility most aren’t considering: Hillary Clinton could win in a 1912-style blowout.
In 1912, Woodrow Wilson won just 41.8% of the popular vote. But President Taft had alienated the progressive wing of the Republican Party, and as a result former President Theodore Roosevelt ran for President on a third-party ticket. The split in the normal Republican vote allowed Wilson to win a 40-state blowout (there were 48 states at the time) in spite of winning just 42% of the vote.
So how does that apply in 2016? As the polls show, much of Trump’s support is a house of cards built upon the assumption that he is the only shot at preventing a Clinton Presidency. But what happens if rank-and-file Republicans start thinking that he doesn’t have a shot? If you don’t like Trump, and Trump is going to lose no matter what — just what is your rationale for voting for him? Republicans have been sending subtle (John Kasich) and not-so-subtle (Ted Cruz) messages to the faithful that it’s okay not to support Trump, but so far they’ve been kept in line by their fear of a Hillary Clinton Presidency.
But the inherent assumption that Clinton can’t win in a landslide is that Republicans (a) like Donald Trump, and (b) think he can win the election. So long as one of those things is true, the election won’t be a blowout. John McCain may not have had a realistic chance at winning (by late October), but at least Republicans liked him. Mitt Romney may not have been trusted by conservatives, but at least he had a realistic chance at winning. If Trump is disliked by a lot of Republicans and has no shot at winning the election, he’s as much of a “wasted vote” as Gary Johnson.
And that’s how this election could turn into a blowout. The house of cards falls apart when poll after poll shows Hillary Clinton with a significant lead, and Republicans who had been planning to hold their nose and vote for Trump will decide that Trump’s not winning either way. Sure, Fox News (and, well, some of the rest of the media) will try to convince the faithful that Trump can still win, but the less credible that sounds, the more votes Trump will bleed to Johnson and other third-party candidates.
So no, I can’t see Clinton getting 61% of the vote as LBJ did in 1964. But I can see her getting around 50% and Trump polling in the 30s with third-party candidates picking up a large share of votes from disaffected Republicans who view Trump as a sure loser who they don’t like anyway.