Fear not, America.
Donald Trump will never become president of the United States.
To prove it, I’ll examine the possible outcomes of the Republican primary and the upcoming general election.
Our most promising outcome is that Trump doesn’t even receive the nomination, which isn’t all that unlikely.
Trump has won 48 percent of the delegates so far, but to secure the nomination, he’ll need at least 53 percent of the remainder.
A 5-percent jump may not seem like much, but don’t forget this is an absolute minimum requirement.
I can’t imagine Trump will start winning by at least 5 percent more over Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich in the coming primaries. There’s absolutely no voting trend or political analysis to support it.
If Trump doesn’t secure the nomination, we’ll have ourselves a brokered convention, but let’s return to that later.
Let’s say he does secure the nomination. In general election match-ups, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton polls at 6.3 percent ahead of Trump, while Sen. Bernie Sanders mounts a 10 percent lead against Trump.
And sure, four presidents have won the electoral college without the majority of the popular vote, but never by more than 3 percent. Clinton’s 6-percent lead is more than enough to keep Trump out of the White House.
In another scenario, after Trump wins the nomination, the GOP establishment launches a third-party moderate campaign, in hopes of drawing enough votes away from Trump and Clinton to prevent any candidate from gathering a majority of the electoral votes, which sends the decision to the House of Representatives.
A Huffington Post article predicted in this scenario the Republican-controlled House will probably select Mitt Romney with Gov. Kasich or Sen. Marco Rubio as vice president.
It wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be Trump.
Usually, this tactic would result in a landslide victory for the Democrats, as was the case in 1912.
However, a properly run, intelligent, moderate campaign could secure enough votes from Democrats.
Clinton is despised by a large portion of the country and, I say as a self-professed moderate, some Democrats looking for a moderate candidate would flock to any similar candidate who isn’t Clinton, including a decent number of Sanders supporters.
If Sanders wins the nomination and the Republicans try this strategy, Sanders wins by that landslide I mentioned earlier. He does far too well with independents for them to abandon ship in this case.
In the final scenario, Trump fails to secure the nomination and, at the brokered convention, the GOP establishment nominates a candidate who’s electable.
Either Trump goes home or he launches his own third-party campaign.
This could result in the outcome mentioned above, where the House still selects a president who is not Trump.
Or his third-party run completely flops and one of the other two candidates receives at least 270 electoral votes and politics as we know it returns to normal.
I think this is a much more likely scenario because Trump would be on his own running as an independent.
Whereas in the prior scenario the GOP establishment runs as the independent — which doesn’t actually make them independent at all.
Either way, it is exceptionally unlikely that Trump will win the general election in November.
But, for the love of God, don’t let this stop you from getting out there and voting against him.
thshowal@indiana.edu
@TherinShowalter
