Karl Rove: I Don’t See Trump Winning Election

Republican political strategist Karl Rove, considered by many to be the architect of former George W. Bush’s winning campaigns, said he doesn’t expect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump can pull off a win in November.

“If he plays an inside straight, he could get it, but I doubt that he’s going to be able to play it,” Rove said on Fox News, according to Media Matters.

In addition to Trump not being disciplined on the campaign trail, Rove said the math doesn’t look good for Trump. The candidate could do worse, Rove pointed out, than 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who only managed to win 206 electoral college votes, compared to President Barack Obama’s 332.

“[Trump] has 186 electoral votes in states that he either leads outside of the margin of error or is thought comfortably put away. That compares to Romney’s 206. That’s Romney’s states minus Arizona and North Carolina, where he’s behind, plus Iowa, where he’s ahead.”

Even with a win in the crucial swing states of Florida and Ohio, Trump doesn’t get to the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House if current polling reflects the election day results.

“[Trump’s] ahead in Ohio by less than one point. That gets him to 214,” Rove said. “There’s only one other state where he’s within four, Florida. That would get him to 243. And everything else ranges from 4.3 to 10 points the rest of the battleground states. He would have to not only win two states where he is either only slightly ahead or behind by four, but he would have to pick up states where he is behind, at, or above the national average.”

Rove added: “I don’t see it happening.”

But not everybody is convinced Trump will lose to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Professor Helmut Norpoth of Stony Brook University in New York State has correctly predicted the last five presidential elections by using a statistical model, and this year he says Trump will be victorious.

“The candidate who does better in his party’s primary beats the other guy who does less well,” Norpoth told Fox News, adding that voters also tend to vote in the opposite party of the one that has been in power for several election cycles.

In July, Norpoth wrote in Newsday that Trump had an 87 percent chance of winning.

Sources: Fox News via Media Matters, Newsday, Fox News / Photo credit: LBJ Library/Flickr