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Why Trump will struggle to beat Clinton

Democratic presidential nominee Mrs Hillary Clinton will most likely win the Nov 8 elections even though it may not be a landslide victory, said American political analyst Kyle Kondik, whose analysis of United States politics has been featured on BBC, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and CNN, among others.

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Democratic presidential nominee Mrs Hillary Clinton will most likely win the Nov 8 elections even though it may not be a landslide victory, said American political analyst Kyle Kondik, whose analysis of United States politics has been featured on BBC, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and CNN, among others.

In an interview with TODAY’s Koi Kye Lee (kyeleekoi [at] mediacorp.com.sg) in Singapore last week, Mr Kondik added that, while Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has appealed to certain segments of voters, he is still not favoured by most Americans. Below is an excerpt of the interview with the Washington-based Mr Kondik, who is the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ nonpartisan newsletter on American campaigns and elections.

Why do you think Republican presidential nominee Mr Trump appeals to his supporters? What leads to the support given to him?

Mr Trump had a message that, I think, appealed to a lot of Republican primary voters, particularly those from areas that were suffering from an economic decline. Many big cities in the US are doing well economically, but not for certain rural areas we call the Rust Belt (the Midwest, Appalachian region), which is traditionally a poor region.

Mr Trump did well in those places because a lot of voters felt that they may be left behind by traditional politicians, and he had an appealing message. There is another aspect that I think has to do with race, and the country is becoming more diverse over time. I think there are a lot of people that are resistant to that kind of change.

There is also a demographic of those under the white working-class voters who do not possess a college education, especially men, that falls under the Republican constituency, and Mr Trump may be popular among them, instead of college-educated and non-white Republican voters. Mr Trump has a very narrow and passionate base of support, but that does not make up the majority of voters in the US. He is doing worse than a typical Republican, and it is one of the reasons why Mrs Clinton is favoured in this election.

Based on the level of support shown for Mr Trump and various issues that have occupied the foreground before the debate, are we seeing a more insular America?

I think that the foreign policy establishment in both parties is generally internationalist in outlook and, in fact, some of the biggest opponents of Mr Trump in the Republican Party are foreign-policy elites. But I think if Mrs Clinton is elected, we probably will see a continuation of Mr Barack Obama’s foreign policy. He has dialled back some of our military commitments overseas, but in general, I think it has been internationalist in outlook.

How will the swing states, such as Ohio and Florida, vote for these nominees? What will help them make a decision come election day?

It seems like most of the competitive swing states are leaning towards Mrs Clinton at this point. Ohio is a state that has a higher percentage of non-college-educated whites than the nation as a whole, and that is Mr Trump’s best demographic. Mr Trump may do a little better in Ohio than he can nationally but Mrs Clinton is up in Ohio’s polls now.

Florida is another state that is typically more Republican than the nation as a whole, and it has a significant number of Hispanic voters.

But in recent years, it has been predictive of voting for the winner, and so Florida is another state that might be a little more Republican, but Mrs Clinton is still in favour to carry it right now.

Do you think it will be a tight race? Do you think Mrs Clinton would eventually emerge as the winner?

I think Mrs Clinton is favoured to win, and she could very well replicate Mr Obama’s four-point national win or be better than that. Mr Obama won by seven points in 2008 with 365 electoral votes.

Our current handicap of the national election has Mrs Clinton at 347 electoral votes and Mr Trump at 191, and that would be a total in between what Mr Obama won in 2012 — 332 votes and 365 votes in 2008.

Right now, we are projecting her for a sizeable but not landslide kind of victory.

Should Mr Trump win, what will it be like for the US and his foreign policies? How does he view Asia? Will he stay on course for the White House’s foreign-policy pivot towards the region?

I think there would be concerns about a Trump presidency. One thing, however, is that the federal government is run by civil service professionals; we have different programmes across the world, international corporations that are not involved with the government, and it will be tempting to say that there will be some sort of international crisis should Mr Trump get elected. Maybe that will be the case, and maybe not.

Another thing to take note of is that Mr Trump has questioned some of our international commitments — in particular, whether he would honour our treaty commitments with Nato is something we could imagine happening. I would think that our foreign policy posture would not change very much under Mrs Clinton, but more dramatically under Mr Trump.

This is the reason why so many Republican foreign-policy elites are supporting Mrs Clinton actively in the election although they would have been supportive of a different kind of Republican nominee, and this would not necessarily be Mr Trump.

Should Mr Trump come to power, how are US-Singapore relations likely to be affected? His America First policy could also mean re-prioritising US relations with Asean, which President Obama has worked hard to strengthen.

I have to say that I do not have a good answer to that, but one of the outstanding issues is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal. It sounds possible that the deal could be approved in a lame-duck session. It may take place in November and December when the old Congress meets before the new Congress, and the President takes over in January 2017.

I think a lot of people in the Obama administration are hopeful that the deal will be passed during the session, but this seems like an open question. We will have to watch and see whether it will happen or not.

How can Mr Trump win over minorities, especially women, in the US since he has made several sexist comments and remarks that are uncalled for in his speeches?

I think the ship has sailed on that and Mr Trump is going to have a hard time doing as well as the former Republican presidential nominee for 2012, Mr Mitt Romney, who had 20 per cent of votes from non-white voters.

African-Americans have been democratic for a long time and polling indicates that Mrs Clinton should get 95 per cent of African-American votes as Mr Trump broke into the political scene questioning Mr Obama’s right to be President.

As for Hispanic votes, the fact that Mr Trump had proposed to build a wall on the Mexican border, this has suggested that he is hostile towards them and it will be hard for him to mend fences.

Some thought that Mr Trump would change his rhetoric after winning the primary to appeal to a broader electorate, but he has not done that. His messages have been consistent and the same, and are targeted at white voters who are either conservative, economically downscale, or both. Mr Trump has not changed, and I do not see any reason that his messages would change.

It does not seem like he is trying to attract the support of minorities and he may very well do worse than Mr Romney did in the polls as the latter fared poorly with the non-white voters in 2012.

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