Democrats Have Different Routes to Win the Electoral College. None Are Easy.

[RandySF]

As the Democratic contest hurtles toward South Carolina and Super Tuesday, Democrats face a profound choice as to the direction of their party and the personal traits and policy positions of their nominee. In the process, they might also be choosing between very different road maps to beating President Donald Trump in the Electoral College.

To win in November, the Democratic nominee will likely need to hold all 20 states Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, plus flip some combination of the six states Trump carried by less than 5 points: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The conventional wisdom surrounding the front-runner, Bernie Sanders, is that his nomination would be the dawn of a new era for Democrats and the culmination of a leftward shift of young voters embodied by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. In reality, Sanders' only realistic path to the White House might be to "turn back the clock" by leaning into the same Rust Belt states that abandoned Clinton and embraced Trump's populist, anti-establishment message in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Sanders often emphasizes the need for a massive surge of new voters to beat Trump in the fall and pledges he'll expand the electorate left. But there's little evidence he's done that so far in February's contests (never mind the fact he's winning far fewer votes than he did in 2016).

The turnout in Iowa's and Nevada's caucuses — while higher than in 2016 — was lower than in 2008. In New Hampshire's primary, the turnout was higher than in 2008 in terms of raw votes cast, but the biggest surges weren't in Sanders' zones but rather in suburbs where rivals Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar performed best.



https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/democrats-have-different-routes-win-electoral-college-none-are