It’s small consolation to the majority of voters who did not vote for Donald Trump that he “only” won the electoral college in 2016. The process by which a candidate in America can become President despite losing among voters themselves by a significant margin seems archaic and almost cruel, especially in the case of Trump.
Endless analysis has been done on the logistics of that electoral college victory — some that fault his opponent for not campaigning enough in those crucial states where Trump won, some that call it a gap between the candidates and “working-class voters,” but all of which leave the foul taste of a Trump win in the mouths of Americans.
What was it about those states in which Trump eked by with a margin just large enough to win?
It turns out it no longer matters.
According to polling from Ipsos Public Affairs, as reported by America’s largest-circulating newspaper, USA Today, those key states that could have changed everything in 2016 are flipping back to Democrats this year.
Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the three states that essentially handed the presidency to Donald Trump, are all showing double-digit leads for the Democratic candidates for US Senate, and Democratic gubernatorial candidates have big leads as well.
By contrast, Trump won those states — which, if they had gone the other way, would have handed Hillary Clinton the win in 2016 — by a margin of less than one percent.
Ipsos Vice President Chris Jackson expressed surprise at the results of the polling:
We went into it thinking that these races were going to be a little bit closer. But it looks like the Democrats are performing pretty strongly across the region with a couple of exceptions.”
In Indiana and Ohio, the two other states mentioned in the polling data, the numbers are too close or within the margin of error to declare a leader, although Senator Sherrod Brown is leading his Republican opponent in Ohio by 11 points.
This is not what the GOP wanted to hear just 40 days before the midterm elections.
Featured image via screen capture
