Tim Blair: How Donald Trump can defy the odds and remain in the White House
Donald Trump is battling not just Joe Biden but also the media, race rioters, polls, China and the swamp. Here’s your 50-state guide to his attempted miracle win, writes Tim Blair.
Opinion
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Our state-by-state US election day adventure begins in Georgia, where polls close at around 9am Wednesday, Sydney time.
And we’re straight into a battle.
Donald Trump won Georgia soundly in 2016, but polls show a much closer contest four years later — which is why Trump and Joe Biden held rallies there on the weekend.
A Biden win might be the first indication of a broader swing.
Indiana is safer for Trump, a 56.4 per cent winner against Hillary Clinton and solid poll leader in 2020.
The state’s abundant and potent bourbon supply messes with one’s memory, but I do recall once seeing in Kentucky a fellow wearing a T-shirt bearing the message: “Make America Straight Again.”
That’d get you arrested in other, sookier parts of the US, but Kentucky is agreeably freewheeling. It’s also where Trump scored almost twice as many votes as Clinton. He’s on course for a similar result.
South Carolina should be a Trump walk, but North Carolina is up for grabs. Of 12 recent polls, only two have 2016 winner Trump ahead. Again, a Biden win might be a sign.
A sign of the End of Days, perhaps, if you’re of an apocalyptic mindset.
Biden is double-digits clear of Trump in Democrat-friendly Virginia, which gives us our first chance to see if “shy Trump voters” are a factor in 2020. Watch that margin.
Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware and Massachusetts are all locks for Biden, seeing as no Republican has won those states since the days when it was acceptable to decorate your Honda Civic with Oakley stickers.
Same deal with Maine and New Hampshire, although numbers are slightly closer. Any success for Trump in the cosy bed and breakfast belt would be astonishing.
Ohio has only once since 1944 preferred the losing candidate (Nixon in 1960). Trump stomped Clinton by nearly half a million votes in ’16, but this year polls insist it’s too close to call.
That is not the case in West Virginia, where Trump scored more than 68 per cent of the vote against Clinton and should do just as well against Biden. You can also put Alabama firmly in Trump’s column.
Which brings us to Florida, one of the most important states in the race and also the trickiest to call.
The place is an absolute demographic and cultural jigsaw. And it’s in two time zones — which all major US television networks forgot in 2000, leading them to declare Florida for Al Gore when polls were still open in the Republican-loaded northern panhandle.
Florida’s winner instantly becomes the election favourite.
The state sport in eternally-corrupt Illinois is sending governors to prison. Naturally, Illinois votes Democrat. So does Maryland, whose largest city Baltimore is one of the saddest and most corroded places in the US.
Like many southern states, Mississippi features numerous majority-black cities and towns. Some polls suggest more than 25 per cent of the black vote nationally will go to Trump, doubling his 2016 total. Something to watch for as Trump easily wins the state.
Missouri will likely stay with the President. Oklahoma, where Trump won last time by 65 per cent to 29, is certain to.
It’s been said New Yorkers would vote for an inanimate object rather than a Republican. This year they’ll prove it. Likewise in New Jersey, another Democrat stronghold.
Trump won Pennsylvania by only 44,000 votes in 2016, grabbing a state owned by Democrats for 28 years. He’s presently behind by about seven points. Then again, Clinton led by six points just a few days before the last election, so who knows?
By the way, this state is home to a species of giant salamander known as the eastern hellbender. Trump supporters may commence a few hellbenders of their own in the event of a Biden triumph.
Little Rhode Island will supply the Democrat contender with its usual helpful handful of electoral college votes.
Remember the Father Karras death scene in The Exorcist? That stone stairway is in Washington DC, where Republicans every four years suffer a similar fate. Biden will probably haul in 90 per cent of the vote, a routine DC return for Democrats.
Honestly, you’d much rather be in Tennessee, Arkansas or Kansas, all reliable Trump-voting places with very few sacrificial demon-possessed priests.
Arizona almost always votes Republican but did so only narrowly in 2016. Current polls have Biden in front, which optimistic Democrats hope indicates an electoral college landslide.
Clinton’s victory margin in Colorado was only slightly larger than Trump’s in Arizona. Biden is on course to win it again.
Louisiana hasn’t wasted its votes on a Democrat since 1996. Trump to win by 20 or so points. He won’t match that in New Mexico, where Biden’s been hovering in the mid-50s since May.
The last time a Republican won Michigan, in 1988, George Michael ruled the charts and the Brisbane Broncos were in their first year.
Then Trump turned things around, winning by 10,704 votes in 2016. The bad news: only one poll shows he’ll again win Michigan. The good news: that poll was the only one to accurately predict the 2016 election outcome.
If Hillary Clinton lost Minnesota four years ago, she’d have been the first failed Democrat there since Gough Whitlam became PM. And she almost did it, finally hanging on by only 1.5 per cent.
Trump’s team believes the state is still in play, despite Biden’s considerable polling break. Minnesota could be a reviver for whoever at this point is running second.
Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota — Trump, Trump, Trump. Democrats have long coveted Texas and its huge haul of electoral college votes, but my usual winter home isn’t shifting away from Republicans yet.
It might be a different story in Wisconsin, which switched to Trump in 2016. Biden is up by 17 points, according to one recent poll.
Trump will claw back support in Wyoming, probably Montana and definitely Utah and Idaho.
The sensible farming folk of Iowa usually pick the winner. If we’re to believe the polls, though, Trump’s 10-point victory last time has flipped to a 0.2 per cent disadvantage.
For Trump’s sake, those shy voters will really have to come through.
Shyness isn’t often associated with the gambling state of Nevada, previously won by Clinton and now leaning towards Biden by an even greater degree.
If they can find any voting stations that haven’t been incinerated, those in the riot belt states of Oregon and Washington might have something to say about the left-wing violence destroying their cities.
More likely they’ll stick with the Democrat candidate and continue their process of joining the Third World.
Speaking of which, it takes a huge effort to convert California’s wealth, beauty and cultural power into a pig-swill cesspit, but years of Democrat incompetence in Los Angeles and San Francisco have achieved exactly that.
People are fleeing those once-great cities, but not before voting Democrat in this election. And they’ll probably do the same in their next state, with predictable results.
Alaska to Trump and Hawaii to Biden. A single-vote Democrat advantage in that exchange.
So who wins?
I prefer Trump, because I’d like to see how this movie ends. On voter excitement and rally numbers, in a voluntary-voting nation, he’s got it.
But just about every poll points to Biden becoming the 46th US President (and Kamala Harris becoming the 47th President, as soon as Joe forgets to wear pants during a White House press conference).
Enthusiasm versus the pollsters. It’s exactly as it was four years ago, with one significant difference.
We might not get an agreed outcome on the day.
An enormous number of mail-in votes could slow counting. In fact, we might get two results — a win for one candidate at some stage on Wednesday and a reversal days, weeks or months later to his opponent.
A victory apiece in 2020. Can’t see any problems with that.
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