The Trick Is Never Be More Hated Than Your Opponent

There's some more numbers to crunch, a lot of it tied into the popularity numbers of the two lead candidates this 2016 for the Presidency.

Here's a poll for how the three major voting factions - Republican, Democrat, Independent - would (un)favor either Trump or Hillary (poll by Quinnipiac University, linked to Washington Post):

Additional polling shows - and it's hidden in the numbers - how Trump is getting about 49 percent of the White Male vote. For any Republican to be under 50 55 60 percent White support of any kind in this day and age is woeful for the GOP.

But let's look at that chart. It asks "Which of these candidates would you never vote for?"

Overall, 42 percent say they'll never vote for Hillary and 58 percent will never vote for Trump.

Break it down by party, and you'll get the standard partisan response: there's no way Democrats will vote for Trump (he's over 84-86 percent on that chart) and there's no way Republicans will vote for Hillary (sitting at 80 percent denial).

But the number for them within their own ranks is what will be troubling for Republicans. Hillary has 6 percent haterdom among Democrats (which looks shockingly low given all the Bernie supporters bash her) but Trump is nearly triple that with 17 percent Republicans refusing to vote for him.

Granted, by the time the actual election kicks in, some of those haters will settle down and return to their party folds. Thing is. Hillary will find it easier to do that and Trump won't: if they get half back to their parties, Hillary can lose 3 percent of her base to Trump losing around 9 percent.

Those are the voters most likely to not even show up at all: the partisan nature of being in a party means they won't cross the aisle to vote for the opponent, but they'll be unhappy enough to sit out altogether.

Can the Republicans afford to have around 8 to 10 percent of their party to avoid the general election? No, going by how things went in 2012 they can't, because they lost then and if they have lower turnout in 2016 they'll lose to an even worse percentage.

And when you throw in how in 2012 Mitt Romney won the Independent voter turnout 50 to 45 percent (the missing 5 percent went third-party) AND STILL LOST to Obama, Trump can't afford to be down among Independents 46-to-54.

Still, the troubling factor here for Republicans is the likelihood that the voters who hate Trump that much may not show up for the election at all. While there's little solid evidence of "coat-tails" of a Presidential candidate helping the down-ticket candidates, there is evidence that lower turnout overall by one party is bad news for that party's lesser candidates from the Congressional districts down to state and county offices.

Even with Congressional seats gerrymandered up the wazoo (about 55 percent of Republican seats are compared to 25 percent for Democrats), any downturn in turnout can run the risk of close losses (as long as Democrats run challengers in all of those districts) for those Republicans. The Senate races may not be directly affected by voters discouraged by Trump, but there will be an impact in close-race states like Florida and Kentucky.

It's interesting to note how - despite all the media chatter and despite all the drum-beating by Bernie's supporters - the hatedom for Hillary is not that severe compared for Trump. It's really not as bad as most of the other Democratic front-runners have endured from their own ranks before. Only six percent of Democrats refuse to vote for her? Wow, the party's really warmed up to Hillary...