Dave Wasserman: “Four years ago, President Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes and still won the White House thanks to a near-perfect geographic vote distribution that allowed him to capture big Electoral College prizes by razor-thin margins. The key? Trump’s unprecedented 37-point margin among white voters without four-year college degrees, who are especially influential in the upper Midwest. But as the U.S. becomes more diverse and college-educated, Trump’s core demographic is steadily declining. In 2020, noncollege whites are on track to make up about 43 percent of the nation’s adult citizens, down from 46 percent in 2016.”
“Meanwhile, whites with four-year degrees, who are trending blue and increasingly behave like a different ethnic group from noncollege whites, will make up 25 percent of adult citizens, up from 24 percent in 2016. And Black Americans, Latinos, Asians and other nonwhites, historically Democrats’ most reliable supporters, will make up 32 percent, up from 30 percent four years ago. A new interactive collaboration by NBC News and The Cook Political Report finds that if 2016’s rates of turnout and support were applied to 2020’s new demographic realities, Trump would narrowly lose Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — more than enough to swing the presidency to Joe Biden. And, Trump would lose the popular vote by about four points, roughly double his 2016 deficit.”