Donald Trump Is Winning Fewer Votes than Mitt Romney

If Trump can’t outperform the last GOP nominee, his brand of populism may not play a big role in the GOP’s future.

Here is the measuring stick for Donald Trump’s performance in 2016: Can he win more votes than Mitt Romney did in the swing states?

To do that, Trump must finish with more than 1.18 million votes in Colorado, 4.16 million votes in Florida, 730,617 votes in Iowa, 2.11 million votes in Michigan, 463,567 votes in Nevada, 329,918 votes in New Hampshire, 2.27 million votes in North Carolina, 2.66 million votes in Ohio, 2.68 million votes in Pennsylvania, 1.82 million votes in Virginia, and 1.4 million votes in Wisconsin.

By beating Romney’s performance in these states, Trump would prove that his populist rhetoric, no-holds-barred style, and unorthodox campaign decisions were more effective than the more traditional approach of the past two GOP nominees. Of course, that seems exceedingly unlikely to happen. Polls are not perfect predictive tools, but they currently show Trump trailing in all of the above states except for Iowa (and maybe Ohio).

Read the rest from Jim Geraghty HERE.

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