, 6 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
I'd probably lean no. I certainly think Trump could win an election where he loses the popular vote by 3 points or even slightly more. That's basically what he did in 2016. (He won WI, the tipping-point state, with ~1 point to spare.) But I'm skeptical that he'd be the favorite.
The reason is that I see this as being a fairly dynamic process. To be honest this is sort of my critique of the @Redistrict/@Nate_Cohn Electoral College analysis; I think they focus on a more static, modal outcome rather than the range of plausible outcomes.
The Obama-era coalition was fairly favorable to Democrats in the Electoral College. Obama would likely have WON an Election in 2008 or 2012 in which the popular vote was very close. This wasn't that long ago.
But the coalition where the urban & suburban South becomes Democratic, at which point states like TX, AZ, GA, FL, NC have high potential to flip, is also pretty decent in terms of electoral efficiency for Democrats, even if they're often losing the Midwestern swing states.
Basically, I think Clinton 2016 was probably close (maybe not exactly *at*) the local minimum for D's. So a coalition that *either* "turned back the clock" (Biden?) *or* turboboosted demographic change (Harris/Castro?) could be better than Clinton 16, which was stuck in between.
@conorsen p.s. A lot depends on TX and FL. The best case for pessimism for D Electoral College math is that TX is still a cycle or 2 away from being a tipping-point state, though it will be eventually. And that FL, despite being a state where demographic change should help Ds, is weird.
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