Trump Campaign Works Up Ways to Win Election Without Winning Florida

With only 40-some days remaining to convince the American people to give him four more years in office, President Donald Trump’s campaign is deeply entrenched in the arithmetic of the election.

Trump has an uphill climb ahead of him, as national polls show that Democratic nominee Joe Biden is holding a lead in both the overall contest and in some of the most important swing states as well.

For the incumbent, Florida is likely a must-win, but there are some scenarios in which Trump can be victorious without carrying The Sunshine State…but they’re not pretty.

[…]with Florida’s registered Democrats for the first time requesting hundreds of thousands more mail-in ballots than Republicans, overseas ballots going out on Sept. 19 and polls showing a tight contest in the nation’s most populous swing state, a Trump loss is being considered as a possibility. The Trump campaign is considering pathways to the White House that do not include Florida.

A defeat in Florida would trigger a set of circumstances that just one Republican nominee in the last 100 years has been able to emerge from victoriously. Former President Calvin Coolidge in 1924 lost Florida but won the national election.

Without Florida’s 29 electoral college votes, Trump would be completely reliant on a trio of Upper-Midwest battleground states he narrowly won in 2016 — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — and would need the electoral votes of at least one additional battleground state he previously lost, such as New Hampshire or Minnesota, in order to win a second term.

The polling that has led to these scenarios are misrepresentations of reality according to some within the Trump campaign, who believe that a vast, silent majority is ready to vote for the incumbent Republican while largely not participating in pre-election polling.