[user104658]

Originally Posted by The Slim Reaper

I think Trump capped out his limit in 16. In order win by a few thousand votes he had the right mix of an excited base to vote for him, and a depressed democratic vote. There's just no evidence that his supporter base has grown, and evidence that points to the opposite happening.

Besides which, he's killing farming because of his trade war, more steel plants have closed in his 4 years, than in 8 years of Obama, and the same with coal, it won't affect his numbers that much, but it will be an issue that his dem opponents can absolutely hammer. He's getting a relatively free pass at the mo as the dems are focussed on each other, but as soon as that's decided, there will be constant attacks on his record - Mexico, healthcare, sucking up to dictators (Kim and I are in love), not believing his own intelligence over Putin etc.


I think he'll always have a rabid base, because of the kind of people he deliberately tries to appeal to, but the mid terms showed that people will flood out in elections to vote against him, and that's his major weakness, his ability to motivate the other side.

Maybe, especially if they hammer home that he's cosying up to communist states, but I still personally believe that general sociological tides play a far bigger role in voting outcomes than any up-to-the-minute specifics or electioneering.

I would also point out that Trump in the odds was 5/1 and Hillary 1/5, exactly mirroring Brexit's 5/1 and Remain's 1/5, and to toot my own trumpet, I considered both Brexit and Trump to be near-certainties. "The indications" look at what's going on, and what the polls say, and neither have much or anything at all to do with what your average voter will do when they plod into that voting booth. They vote with their gut, and with "what sounds about right" vagueries. Voter apathy in the heavily democrat states is out of the equation; Dems still took them so again, it doesn't matter if the Dem vote in NYC or Los Angeles literally doubles. It would greatly extend the popular vote lead of the Democrats but, in the US system, so what? The only states that matter are the swing states and I'm FAR from convinced that the revitalised Democrat vote will outweigh the emboldened vote of Wall-supporting illiterates who haven't voted for generations. Those people aren't being polled. They're not part of the debate. They'll still be part of the numbers in the final count and people forget that.