Current presidential polls in swing states show that Republican Donald Trump has a very difficult path to win the White House over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, The Hill reports.
The most likely way for Trump to win is for him to capture every state that GOP candidate Mitt Romney did in 2012 and then add the key battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which would push him above the 270 electoral votes needed for the presidency.
In all three of those states, President Barack Obama beat Romney by 5 percentage points or less, so they would all appear to be ripe ground for a doable political shift.
In Florida, for example, Obama won by only 1 percentage point. The state has a significant 29 electoral votes, and Trump has no realistic path to overall victory without winning the Sunshine State.
The problem for Trump is that the latest CBS News poll released over the weekend shows that Clinton has widened her lead over him there to 5 percentage points, up from a 3 percentage point advantage in June.
In Ohio, which has 18 electoral votes, the latest polls released after the Republican and Democratic National Conventions ended last month shows that Clinton holds a slim advantage over Trump, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
But even if Trump were to emerge victorious in both Florida and Ohio, where the polls show only a relatively narrow Clinton lead, the situation in Pennsylvania is significantly different. The state, which has 20 electoral votes, has gone Democratic in every presidential election since 1992, including a five percentage point victory by Obama in 2012.
And although Trump insists that his appeal resonates among the many blue collar workers there, the latest poll conducted by Quinnipiac University earlier this month shows Clinton with a solid 10 percentage point advantage over Trump.
If Trump wins Florida and Ohio but loses Pennsylvania, he could still capture the presidency, but the path would be even a tougher task of overcoming significant margins in several other states that have consistently gone Democratic in recent elections, The Hill reports.
Clinton's path is much simpler. Even if she loses Florida, Ohio and Virginia, the three states Obama won by the smallest margin in 2012, she would still become president if she captures the other states he did, all of which were by more significant margins.
And that's without even emerging victorious in any of the states Romney captured, which polls show she does have a good chance of winning.
Of course, the campaign still has well over two months to go and there can be any number of reasons for a shift in the polls, or a revelation on Election Day that the surveys were not so accurate after all. But in the meantime, Clinton clearly appears to be holding the advantage.
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