Donald Trump was in Colorado on Friday and he’s sending his caddie, Mike Pence, to campaign there next week. He must think he has a chance in the Centennial State, but things don’t look too positive in that regard. The Real Clear Politics polling average gives Clinton an eight point advantage, every recent poll shows a clear lead for her, and the most recent polls (Fox– Clinton +10, Monmouth– Clinton +13) are the worst ones in the bunch.
Most troublesome for Trump, he’s lagging behind Clinton with white voters. For example, the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll found Trump trailing Clinton by 19 points with college-educated whites. That’s too big of a deficit to overcome with his 11-point lead with whites who have no college degrees. There isn’t one chance in hell that Trump will will any racial group other than whites, so if nothing changes this is checkmate.
Thus:
In a sign of confidence, Clinton is ratcheting down her investments on the air here: Earlier this week, her campaign ended a statewide television buy that began in mid-June.
With nine Electoral College votes, Colorado is a medium sized prize [bigger than Oregon and Connecticut (7) and smaller than Missouri (10) and Arizona (11)]. It’s not likely to be a key state, as most plausible scenarios don’t have it serving as a tipping-point. I can come up with at least one scenario, though, where Colorado would be decisive. If Trump were to win every Romney state and also win Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Iowa then Colorado would give him a very narrow 272-266 victory. Of course, in that scenario, Virginia could serve the same purpose.
On the whole, though, Clinton probably is happy to have Trump and Pence stumping out in the Rockies instead of in states where they stand a better chance and where the results are more likely to matter.
