Mapping Donald Trump’s path to winning 270 electoral votes

Trump would need to reinvent himself if he were to be elected president, says a US election expert as the American people get ready to vote on November 8.

Source: AFP

If the US election were being decided on only the popular vote, the race between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would be tight to the finish line.

Hillary Clinton is four points ahead of Donald Trump in the final days of election campaign, the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows.

However, US election expert Dr John Hart from the Australian National University told SBS News that the popular vote is not the deciding factor in the 2016 US Presidential Election. It's the electoral vote, which Trump has unlikely secured, that matters.

Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump need to secure 270 of the 538 electoral college votes to become the next president of the US.

"The electoral vote counts more than the popular vote and Trump is still a long way off under the most favourable circumstances, he's still a long way off being able to get 270 electoral votes," he said.

 

The popular presidential vote takes place on November 8 when registered voters will cast their ballots for the next leader of the free world.

But the public are actually voting for state electors, the number for each state relative to its population, even though the ballot paper usually only says the name of the candidate the elector intends to support.

These electors then come together in December for the electoral college vote, which decides the next president.

The electoral vote

Dr Hart says a presidential candidate does not just need more popular votes, but they need to be distributed very efficiently around the whole country so that the candidate wins the states and their respective electoral votes.

He believes that Mrs Clinton has a more "efficient" distribution of the votes.

Most of the big states are already safe Clinton states such as New York, which has 29 electoral votes, and California (55) where she already has a 22 per cent lead.

"That's a huge start."

Of the swing states, the biggest ones, Florida and Pennsylvania, are the most critical to the candidates, he said.

If they turn red, the electoral vote will be close or Mrs Clinton will be in trouble.

 

However, he says he does not see this happening.

"Short of Hillary Clinton being caught with selling drugs or something ... it’s hard to imagine the circumstances that would give Trump a further amount of public support that would shift the electoral vote."

So if Trump had the opportunity to start his campaign again, what would he need to do to win enough states to secure 270 electoral votes and become the 45th President of the United States?

Trump would need to un-Trump

Dr Hart says voters are not necessarily selecting the candidates on their policies.

"The cleavage in America over whether to vote for Trump or Clinton, by and large, is not over policy because hardly any policy has been articulated in this election campaign.

"It’s a cleavage about the capacity for leadership and personal animosity."

Trump, therefore, would need to become a changed person to execute a successful election campaign.

"By behaving more conventionally, more presidential and not shooting his mouth off every time he spoke."

A completely different and potentially presidential Trump would be "a lot more conventional, a lot more sophisticated, a lot better informed about public policy, because a lot of people are simply scared of putting the White House in the hands of a man who is clearly ignorant".

“A person who reveals all his prejudices in the way that Trump has done, makes a lot of people worried about him leading the country.”

File images of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Source: AAP

Dr Hart points out that what has likely ruled him out as president is what gained him the presidential nomination.

The nomination contest tends to drive the candidates more to the extreme view of their respective parties, he said.

“Trump appealed to the right wing extremist element in a Republican Party. Hillary Clinton was driven to go more to the left in the Democratic party than she wanted to."

Then when they face the electorate in the election proper, the candidates move to the centre to appeal to the American public.

"Hillary Clinton has made that move more professionally, Trump hasn't made that move at all. And that's the problem."

More 'angry white working-class voters'

While Trump appeals to the so-called 'angry white working-class voters', there's simply not enough of them, according to Dr Hart.

"So the kinds of appeal that Trump is making to the recently dispossessed, people who are out of work, who are in menial jobs, where, not having any salary increase for a long while – they're a minority."

Appeal to women

A recent Washington Post-ABC News Tracking Poll shows that while Hillary Clinton is ahead by two points in the popular vote, Donald Trump is behind by 27 points in the college-educated white women vote, in line with previous trends.

Mr Trump has turned off a lot of women during this campaign with a barrage of comments many have perceived as sexist, from naming journalist Megyn Kelly a "bimbo" to media mogul Arianna Huffington "extremely unattractive".

He has also caused outrage by suggesting to MSNBC that women should be liable for "some form of punishment" if they had abortions, after initially being pro-choice.

Dr Hart said: "Trump would need to have won over this particular group to have any chance of winning the election.

"But, of course, it's just another key demographic group that he has gone out of his way to offend."

Embrace Latinos

Trump has done himself a disservice by offending Latinos, Dr Hart says, and as such is missing out on comfortable wins in states such as Arizona and New Mexico, Nevada and Florida, which are states where the Hispanic voting bloc is quite sizable.

If polls are right, an increase in Hispanic voters in early and absentee ballots in Nevada and Florida could be an advantage to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Latino citizens, the biggest minority group in the US, are described as a "sleeping giant", the least likely to vote, according to past election statistics.

But on Friday in Clark County in the state of Nevada alone, Latino voters helped Ms Clinton lead in an early ballot cast to 72,000, according to Politico.

"Some of [Trump's] outrageous positions, like wanting to build a wall to keep the Latinos out, – that’s turned off the Latinos, and that’s pretty dumb because they are now the biggest minority in the United States and he needed them," Dr Hart says.

The Mexican community comprises 17 per cent of US' population.

Dr Hart thinks he could have had a chance at presidency if he had kept them on his side.

"If he hadn't said anything about repatriating Latinos, if he'd have talked in the same was as Hillary Clinton, that is trying to find a path to citizenship for these illegal aliens who are in the country and working at the moment, I think it could have been very different."

Stanford University Professor Shanto Iyengar told SBS earlier this year, it's not just the Latino people he needs to appease to but the "college-educated whites repelled by his race baiting".

Any effort to regain the trust of Latinos is "not aimed at minority voters, but it's actually aimed at convincing whites that maybe he's not such a racist after all," Professor Iyengar said.

Gain Black trust

Dr Hart says, like Latinos, Trump may have had a chance at presidency if he had Black and African-American people, which make up about 13 per cent of the US population, on side.

"But the only way he could have done it would be by actually developing policies on employment specifically directed at Black employment problems, which is low-wage jobs in the inner city areas."

Trump is said not to have gained trust of African-American people. Source: AP

To compound that was the furore around election rigging.

"Had he not come out with all this talk in recent weeks about the election system being rigged and people in the inner city areas, [with have larger Black and African-American populations], conducting electoral fraud, which is complete fantasy – that was all coated racism."

Those areas are known to have larger Black and African-American populations.

"That really has offended the black community."