Pennsylvania has 4 million registered Democrats and 3.1 million
Republicans, but only 62,000 Democrats have switched sides since the
beginning of 2016, state data show.
Trump says Muslims not doing enough to prevent attacks
Donald Trump is expected to breeze to victory on Tuesday in the New York primary and he's vowed to put the heavily Democratic
state in play in the November general election, but the Queens native
could find his home state a political graveyard like so many Republican presidential contenders before him.
Polls show Trump beating his Republican rivals with about 50 percent support versus roughly 20 percent each for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich.
The New York businessman insists he is the only one of the three
remaining candidates who can attract enough new voters to win states in
the Nov. 8 general election that have long been key Democratic
strongholds.
Trump has said repeatedly in
interviews and on the campaign trail that he could rewrite the electoral
map to put historically Democratic states such as New York and
Pennsylvania in play in a general election. As he describes it, he has
crossover appeal that is strongest in the populous northeastern United
States, where social attitudes are more liberal than in the deeply
religious South and Midwest.
Yet polls and
voter-registration records suggest Trump's odds of beating a Democrat in
any Northeastern state, let alone New York, are much lower than, say,
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton winning a fortune in a
Trump-owned casino.
Corey Lewandowski, Trump's
campaign manager, said in an interview that even though he hasn't
started competing in the general election, Trump has an advantage in New
York because he's well known and employs people in the state. He cited
Trump's strong primary performances in Massachusetts and New Hampshire
as evidence of his popularity in New England.
"What
you have with Donald Trump is a candidate who is the only candidate in
this race that will actually have an opportunity to win states that Mitt
Romney didn't win," Lewandowski said, referring to the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, who is also a former Massachusetts governor.
Pennsylvania
has 4 million registered Democrats and 3.1 million Republicans, but
only 62,000 Democrats have switched sides since the beginning of 2016,
state data show.
New York, with 5.8 million
registered Democrats and 2.7 million Republicans, has shown virtually no
shift, with the gap between registered voters of the two parties
holding fairly steady between 2015 and 2016, according to state records.
If Trump has crossover appeal, it's not yet apparent.
The
strong Democratic tilt in the Northeast corridor - a region stretching
from Maine to Maryland - has made it much harder for Republicans to win
at the national level. A conservative has only won one state in the
Northeast in the 20-year span from 1992-2012, when George W. Bush eked
out a victory in New Hampshire in 2000.
New York has not gone Republican in a general election since 1984 when Reagan won 49 of 50 states in a historic landslide.
Trump
touts his support with working-class voters, especially unionized
workers. His biggest advocate in New York, the Buffalo businessman and
former gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, said he expects Trump to
attract new voters in November who support his call for tariffs on
imported goods from China, Mexico and other countries that have cut into
the U.S. manufacturing base.
Yet national polls
suggest Trump lacks the crossover appeal with the independents and
disaffected Democrats he frequently touts: A Reuters/Ipsos poll shows 62
percent of Americans view Trump unfavorably. Among women, who make up a
slight majority of general-election voters, 67 percent view Trump
unfavorably, according to the poll.
Former
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, a Republican who served as secretary of
homeland security under George W. Bush, called Trump "a very divisive
person."
"I just don't think his personality,
nor his style, nor his point of view - whatever that is - will appeal to
the kind of Republican and Democrat support he will need in
Pennsylvania," said Ridge, who supports Kasich.
Trump
has been a lightning rod for controversy, calling for Muslims to be
banned from entering the United States, referring to people illegally
crossing into the country from Mexico as "rapists" and suggesting women
who get illegal abortions should be punished.
Even
New Hampshire, with a close divide between Republicans and Democrats
that makes it rare among Northeastern states, would be a long shot for
Trump in a general election, predicted Dave Carney, a Republican
strategist in the state.
"When upwards of 75
percent of women are repulsed by you, that's the largest voting bloc
there is. Whether you're a New York woman or an Ohio woman, it makes all
these little talking points irrelevant," Carney said.
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