President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign is facing a "map from hell," as states that carried his thin 2016 victory – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – are showing the incumbent "in a deep hole," albeit just like he was going into 2016, Axios reported.
"Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are harder this time because Hillary Clinton, a turnoff for many working-class voters, won't be on the ballot," according to Axios' Mike Allen.
In recent polling reports, per Axios:
- Trump "has a precarious path to victory" in Wisconsin, according to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
- Trump faces "serious headwinds" in Michigan, according to the Detroit Free Press.
- And a "Pennsylvania meltdown triggers Republican alarms," according to Politico after the midterms.
Not only are the numbers bad in those northern states, but Democrats have also gained ground in once dead-red states like Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, according to the report.
"Trump's margin for error this time is much smaller, because he's being squeezed from the north and the south," Allen reports.
Despite the doomsday polling, this was no different for Trump heading into the 2016 election campaign, a current adviser told Axios.
"He's basically where he was and, depending on the poll, possibly better than where he was going into the 2016 general election," the adviser said. "I wouldn't say this is a bad place to be."
Repeating his 2016 presidential rally to victory will be difficult, though, according to former President Barack Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod to Axios.
"I'd sooner be the Dems than Trump," Axelrod told Allen. "He drew an inside straight in 2016 with narrow wins in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. He is vulnerable today in each, with no obvious prospect of adding a state to his column in 2020."
The re-election will come down to whom President Trump is campaigning against, Axelrod added to Axios.
"[P]residents often run better against an opponent than they do in the abstract, and Trump does have a kind of feral genius for caricaturing his foes and dominating the media," Axelrod told Allen.
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