Donald Trump may well get more of the so-called "missing" white voters to come to the polls and vote for him in November, but it likely won't be enough to swing the election his way,
writes David Wasserman at the FiveThirtyEight blog.
The conventional wisdom is that Trump is bringing out white voters who turned out to vote for independent Ross Perot in 1992, but who have stayed home in subsequent elections. Perot, like Trump, was a self-financing billionaire businessman who ran an unconventional campaign opposing NAFTA and bringing America back to its former greatness.
But while FiveThirtyEight's analysis found that Trump has been successful in tapping into such voters, typically working-class without college degrees, they appear to be in highest concentration in non-battleground states where their votes will not have an effect one way or the other.
Since presidential elections are state-by-state and not a national popular vote, Trump's pickup of these "missing" voters are not likely to help him.
Wasserman said his methodology included ramping up white voter turnout to 1992 levels while keeping all other categories at 2012 levels.
But the percentage of white voters without college degrees has dropped from 65 percent in 1980 to 33 percent in 2016. At the same time, nonwhite voters have risen from 12 percent to 28 percent.
While black voting may decrease in 2016 without President Barack Obama on the ballot, Hispanic voting may rise since many in that bloc have a strong dislike for Trump over comments he has made about illegal immigration.
While it's not impossible for Trump to swing the battleground states won by Obama in 2012 his way, FiveThirtyEight's statistics suggest he would "require truly historic levels of support and turnout among working-class whites — in addition to avoiding erosion with other groups — to be within range of winning," Wasserman said.
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