Last Call For The Destiny Of Demography

This, by Daily Beast's Stuart Stevens, is why I'm not worried about Trump winning.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent of white voters and won a landslide victory of 44 states. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 59 percent of whites and lost with 24 states. But it’s a frequent talking point that white voter enthusiasm was higher for Reagan and turnout down for Romney. Not so. In 1980, 59 percent of whites voted and in 2012, 64 percent of whites voted.

But still the myth survives that there are these masses of untapped white voters just waiting for the right candidate. Call it the Lost Tribes of the Amazon theory: If only you paddle far enough up the river and bang the drum loud enough, these previously hidden voters will gather to the river’s edge. The simple truth is that there simply aren’t enough white voters in the America of 2016 to win a national election without also getting a substantial share of the non-white vote. Romney won 17 percent of the non-white vote. Depending on white voter turnout, a Republican needs between 25 percent and 35 percent of the non-white vote to win. RealClearPolitics has a handy tool so you can play with the percentages.

The Trump campaign talks about being able to reach out to Hispanics and African Americans but it’s not an overstatement to say he would be the most unpopular candidate with either group to ever lead a national ticket. Only 12 percent of Hispanics have a favorable view of Trump with 77 percent unfavorable. Even among Hispanic Republicans, he has a 60 percent unfavorable ranking. Among African Americans, 86 percent have an unfavorable view of Trump.

So let's play with that tool.  Here's the 2012 numbers for Obama-Romney:

If we keep turnout the same, and are SUPER generous to Trump and give him 5% of the black vote, 20% of the Hispanic vote, and 25% of the Asian vote, he still needs more than 64.5% of the white vote to squeak out a win, WAY more than Romney got.

And if we keep turnout the same by percentage, poor Donald would need more than 89% of the white vote to win.

Now let's try my best educated guess: non-white turnout is up, Trump gets a measly 4% of the black vote and 15% of the Hispanic and Asian vote, and turnout among white voters is down (because emoprogs stay home and whine or something) but the white voters who do show up, Trump gets 65% of them, a huge increase in white voter share.

Trump absolutely gets the crap kicked out of him and then some.

This is the scenario I see with Trump running.  You would have to see non-white voter turnout under 50% before the race gets close with the dismal percentages of non-white votes that I think Trump would get. Likewise, unless you think Trump is going to get 18% of all three non-white voting groups (yes, that includes getting 18% of the black vote) he's done.

He can't win, folks.  Marco Rubio? Rubio might have been able to get enough of the Hispanic vote to win, but he'd need something like 60% plus more white votes than Romney got.

So no, the GOP is screwed without black, Asian, and Hispanic votes.  Absolutely.  And this is why they are in full panic mode.