Politics

One Tweet Sums up How the General Election Is About to Go Down

May 5th 2016

This has been a dramatic week in an already dramatic election.

The Indiana primary gave us some some shockers and solidified some math for general election predictions by the University of Virginia's Center for Politics "Sabato's Crystal Ball" blog. It's going to be a Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump Royal Rumble in the general election, and the experts at UVA have a sneak peak.

It's been a long road to get to these predictions.

Last week, former Republican hopeful Ted Cruz announced Carly Fiorina as a his nominee for Vice President. They tried to shake hands.

However, after only six days, Ted Cruz dropped out of the race following Donald Trump's domination of Indiana's Tuesday primary.

And, on Wednesday morning, Ohio governor John Kasich announced he was suspending his campaign too.

As RNC Chairman Reince Priebus put it, Trump is the "presumptive nominee."

The Democratic side looks solidified as well. Larry Sabato from UVA's Center for Politics wrote on the "Crystal Ball" blog that "impressive as Bernie Sanders’ insurgency has been," Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic presidential nominee, unless something earth shattering happens, like the FBI comes to get her. This means that we can bank on this Clinton-Trump showdown in the general election.

Here's what that will look like according to this Tweet by Sabato.

The "Sabato's Crystal Ball" prediction gives Clinton the win with 347 delegates to Trump's 191. The prediction has important swing states like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania leaning towards the Democratic nominee. President Obama also won Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in 2012. 

Geoffrey Skelley also from UVA's "Crystal Ball," told ATTN:  that one of the reasons they're predicting that Trump will lose is that he is horrible with women. "First, he has awful favorability and horse race numbers among women," he said. "Although Clinton’s numbers among men aren’t great, Trump’s are notably worse with women, including white woman, who the GOP nominee has won in every presidential election since 1996."

Skelley also said that trump will mostly likely fail big with Latinos too. "Second, Trump has even scarier levels of unfavorability among Latino voters, to the tune of a net favorability of -76 percentage points in a recent Latino Decisions poll," he said "To put Trump’s Hispanic numbers into perspective, Ted Cruz’s net favorability was -16 and John Kasich’s was -10."

However Sabato writes that Clinton can still lose if she takes predictions like these for granted.

Sabato argues that Trump inspires passion in voters and Clinton does not. 

"As controversial as he is, few presidential candidates have equaled Trump’s fire on the stump," Sabato said. Clinton has to convince Sanders voters who "dislike and mistrust her" to come over to her side in order to lock in the win.

Skelley said that if President Obama starts to fail big time, it might give Trump the opportunity to make a comeback. 


"He’ll likely need shifts in the major election fundamentals to put himself in a position to win," he said "Namely, he will need the economy to suffer and for President Obama’s approval rating to start sliding." If Americans turn against Obama this would be bad for Clinton. 

"Having tied herself to Obama, Clinton is a continuity candidate." he said. "If the overall political environment becomes worse for Obama, it becomes worse for her."

Sabato and the team at UVA have stuck to their guns from the first Trump versus Clinton map they made at the end of March. That map also showed Clinton winning 347 delegates in the general election and Trump only winning 191.

 Revised Crystal Ball 2016 Electoral College ratings for a Clinton vs. Trump matchupUniversity of Virginia Center for Politics - centerforpolitics.org

RELATED: Ted Cruz Announced That He's Suspending His Presidential Campaign

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