Mar 31, 2016 3 min read

CALIFORNIA – At the outset of the 2016 presidential election, political scientist Alan Abramowitz believed this year’s contest would be similar to those in 2012 or 2004 – the two candidates would end up separated in the popular vote by about three or four points, and the Electoral College tally would hinge on the results in swing states like Ohio, Florida and Virginia.

And then Donald Trump’s rise started, and the whole board was upended.

Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta and a widely cited forecaster of presidential elections, said in a talk at California University of Pennsylvania’s Eberly Hall Thursday the likelihood that Republican frontrunner Trump would end up the party’s nominee means the predictable template has to be tossed aside – to the advantage of Hillary Clinton, who, in Abramowitz’s estimation, is the overwhelming favorite to be anointed by Democrats.

“Hillary Clinton will have a significant advantage,” Abramowitz said. “Her advantage will be significantly larger with Trump as the Republican nominee.”

He cited recent polling match-ups that have Clinton beating Trump in November by at least 10 points in the popular vote. Though seven months will elapse between now and the general election, Abramowitz explained polls at this stage of the contest actually have some predictive power – polls in March 2012, to cite an example, showed President Obama up by about four points over eventual Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, mirroring the 51 percent to 47 percent outcome.

“Leading Republican strategists are already writing off the presidential race,” Abramowitz pointed out. Their focus is now on preserving Republican seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, he added.

Abramowitz’s discussion, sponsored by the American Democracy Project at Cal U., also explored how we came to this pass, with a highly polarized electorate full of voters who can’t see eye-to-eye on much of anything with their opponents. Abramowitz said the polarization was largely being driven by the fact the United States has become divided by race, culture and ideology.

“The most important of all is the growing racial divide between the two parties,” he said. “America is undergoing a diversity explosion. Our population is becoming much more ethnically and racially diverse all the time.”

The growing polarization of voters has manifested itself in the relatively tight margins of presidential elections over the last 30 years. The last time a president won election in a consensus-building landslide was in 1984, when Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale by 18 points in the popular vote and demolished him in the Electoral College. In contrast, 40 of the 50 states have voted for the same party’s nominee in all four of the presidential elections since 2000.

Abramowitz also dispelled the widely peddled notion that more and more American voters are becoming independents all the time and turning away from the two major political parties.

“Baloney!”, Abramowitz said. “Don’t believe it. There are many voters who identify as independent, but the large majority lean toward a party.”

No matter who triumphs in the 2016 presidential election, Abramowitz forecast that a contest between Trump and Clinton will lure voters to the polls.

“A Trump-Clinton match-up would result in a pretty high turnout,” he said. “When voters think there is a big difference between the candidates and there is no incumbent, they turn out.”