This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on May 9, 2016 All of us in the political-pundit class could be wrong again about Donald Trump, along with 25 of the 29 national polls collected by Realclearpolitics.com so far this year. It is, after all, conceivable that Trump could beat Hillary Clinton in November. Clinton has high unfavorability numbers, but Trump’s are even worse. From 1992 to 2012, the Democrats won 18 states plus the District of Columbia with a combined 242 electoral votes (89 percent of the 270 needed to win), compared to the 13 states with 102 electoral votes that the GOP has won six times in a row (38 percent). This structural disadvantage will be hard to overcome. So let’s assume Trump loses. That means Republicans with an eye to the 2020 presidential race have four and a half years to position themselves—or, in the case of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, reposition themselves—for what they think the Republican Party and the country will be looking for then. But which Republican Party should they try to position themselves
Subscribe Today
Our subscribers have first access to individual race pages for each House, Senate and Governors race, which will include race ratings (each race is rated on a seven-point scale) and a narrative analysis pertaining to that race.