From polling to early voting trends to TV ad spending to ground game, Donald Trump’s Florida fortunes are beginning to look so bleak that some Republicans are steeling themselves for what could be the equivalent of a “landslide” loss in the nation’s biggest battleground state.
Trump has trailed Hillary Clinton in 10 of the 11 public polls conducted in October — according to POLITICO’s Battleground States polling average, Clinton has a 3.4 point lead. Even private surveys conducted by Republican-leaning groups show Trump’s in trouble in Florida, where a loss would end his White House hopes.
“On the presidential race we’ve found Clinton with a consistent 3% - 5% lead in surveys that attempt to reflect Florida’s actual electorate,” Ryan D. Tyson, vice president of political operations for the Associated Industries of Florida business group wrote in a confidential memo emailed to his conservative-leaning members this weekend and obtained by POLITICO.
Though Clinton’s lead is “within the margin of error for this survey, we would suggest that 3% really isn’t as close as it may seem in the state of Florida,” Tyson wrote, estimating a turnout of as much as 71 percent, or as many as 9.2 million Florida voters overall. If that happens and the polling margins hold, Clinton’s raw vote lead over Trump could end up being 275,000 to 460,000 votes.
“This is in all reality a landslide in our great state,” Tyson wrote, echoing the concerns of numerous Florida Republican insiders and experts. “Based on his consistent failure to improve his standing with non-white voters, voters under 50 and females, it seems fairly obvious to us that Mr. Trump’s only hope left in Florida is a low turnout.”
