Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner in the presidential race, political analyst Larry Sabato said Friday, pointing to his new electoral map that shows the Democratic nominee is already far past the 270 Electoral College votes she needs to win the election.
But, he said, there is still time for Donald Trump to mount a Harry Truman-like comeback.
"She has 348 electoral votes right now," Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program. "Donald Trump has 190. Even the new campaign manager for Donald Trump, our friend Kellyanne Conway, has said that Donald Trump is indeed the underdog. And you have to embrace your role if you're going to change it."
Trump could learn a great deal from late President Harry Truman, said Sabato, referring to the late president as the "patron saint of candidates who are behind."
Truman was an incumbent who "captured the spirit of the underdog."
In Sabato's report, posted on his "Crystal Ball" website, New Hampshire, with just four electoral votes, is coming into play, with Clinton leading by about seven to eight points. The state is a reliable one for Democrats, after choosing John Kerry in 2004 and President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
The projection site also counts Clinton as having 273 electoral votes from safe states and likely Democratic states, which puts her over the 270-vote threshold needed to win the presidency for the first time.
The Crystal Ball moved New Hampshire from leans Democrat to likely Democrat in the edition published on Thursday because the Democratic nominee has a seven- to eight-point lead according to polls in the state.
Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley wrote in their report that Trump is enjoying a surge of support among blue-collar, white voters who did not graduate from college, but that backing is not stretching to New Hampshire, which has the fourth largest percentage of white college graduates in the United States.
Trump still has the potential for plays in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa, and without counting toss-up states, Sabato's latest battleground map shows Clinton firmly in the lead.
This means Trump needs to find a way not only to sweep the Republican states, but to turn one of the states deemed likely or safe Democratic to his side, the report's writers said, advising followers that anything can happen between now and November, but they would not "recommend betting your children's college funds on a Trump administration."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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