It was often wondered during the
election, especially by many in #NeverTrump, by how much Ted Cruz or Marco
Rubio would be leading in the polls at any given moment. This mainly stemmed
from the fact that many of us were convinced that Trump would lose to Clinton
in the end, probably in a landslide, and was a natural daydream to have about
“what might have been”.
But Trump won after all. And the natural
next question becomes, If he won, could any of those sixteen other Republicans
also beat Clinton? Or was Trump unique?
I think the answer is complicated. On
the one hand, the evidence—Trump’s unique appeal to working-class white voters,
his rhetoric and policy positions on trade and immigration, etc.—and my own gut
feeling tell me that more than likely, only Trump could have won, with the map as it ultimately appeared.
Only Trump could have picked up enough
working-class voters to win Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, the three
states that put him over the top, while also taking the more traditional battlegrounds
of Ohio and Florida and holding the Republican South.
But this observation also comes with the
reminder that there was more than one path to victory, for Trump or any
Republican candidate. Obviously these scenarios will remain forever unproven,
but I believe that Rubio could have held the traditional Republican states
(those that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012), carried Florida, North Carolina,
Ohio, and perhaps Virginia, and also won Nevada and Colorado, while being
competitive in Pennsylvania and New Mexico. Cruz would have had a narrower
path, but against Clinton he too could have conceivably carried Florida, North
Carolina, and Ohio, and made a play for either Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. That
map, too, while offering a narrower path to the White House than Trump’s
ultimately did, would still have counted as a win.
Or take Scott Walker as yet another
example. Had he made it through the primaries and become the nominee, he too
would have likely carried the Romney states, plus Florida, North Carolina, and
Ohio, would likely have carried Wisconsin, and could have made a decent attempt
at winning Nevada, Colorado, and Pennsylvania.
As I said, it’s safe to make these sorts
of predictions after the fact, because we will likely never see a Cruz vs. Clinton
or Walker vs. Clinton matchup in order to prove or disprove them (and if we do,
and Hillary runs again, heaven help
us). But my point is that all of the maps I just described would be well within
the realm of possibility, which is as close to provability as we are likely to
get. Hillary Clinton was fundamentally a weak candidate. Many of the
Republicans who stood on that first debate stage last August could well have
beaten her—just not in the same manner
as Trump ultimately did.
It was a combination of many factors
that led to Trump’s ultimate success. If he had run against a stronger
Democratic nominee, one who could have appealed to the same base of
working-class whites, Trump would have lost. If that base was not coming off of
eight years of disappointment and resentment following Barack Obama’s two
victories—who was initially supported by many Trump voters—he would have lost.
If he had run against a smaller field of candidates in the primary, instead of
the sixteen rivals who served to divide the vote enough so that, at least at
the beginning, Trump could consistently win states with just 25 or 30% of the
vote, he would have lost. In short, if he had run in any year other than 2016,
Trump would not have even gotten close to the nomination.
This assertion does actually have some
evidence to back it up. In 2012, when he was considering running for President,
Trump’s name was included in some early primary polls. At first he did well,
but his numbers soon tanked and
he ultimately decided not to run. This year, everything had to align perfectly
for him to win it all, and everything did.
We’ll see in 2020 whether those factors,
combined with a new incumbency factor, line up once again for another Trump
victory.
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