Ross Perot stirred up the turnout of white voters to a level not seen since 1992, which gives Donald Trump cause for hope in this election battle of demographics,
FiveThirtyEight.com reports.
The similarities between Trump and Perot, in style and substance, are startling, lending support to a theory that Trump could tap into those voters.
Trump, already strong with white voters, could use an uptick in turnout from whites to counterbalance the surge in non-white voters.
In Perot's case in 1992, when he ran as a third-party Independent, there was a 2 percent increase of whites at the polls, FiveThirtyEight reports.
Further, if the same percentage of white voters turned out in 2012 as 1992, it would have accounted for an additional 8.8 million white votes, more than Barack Obama's 5 million margin of victory, FiveThirtyEight reports.
Where could that help Trump the most? According to FiveThirtyEight, three battleground states from 2012, won by Obama, would be attainable to Trump in 2016 if he were to turn out and get the following percentages of "missing" white votes:
- Florida: 58 percent
- Nevada: 89 percent
- Ohio: 75 percent
Everywhere else, FiveThirtyEight reports, Trump would need to exceed the 2 percent uptick in white turnout that Perot garnered.
"'Missing'" Perot voters exist, and they could be a part of Trump's blueprint for victory," FiveThirtyEight writes. "But in most battleground states, Trump would need to activate far more working-class whites than Perot did to win.
"That's not impossible, but (it) requires truly historic levels of support and turnout among working-class whites — in addition to avoiding erosion with other groups — to be within range of winning."
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