Steve Kornacki: Pennsylvania Is One Of Trump's Best Prospects
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Cable news host Steve Kornacki spoke with Rich Zeoli on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT about Donald Trump's chances to win Pennsylvania in the presidential election and he believes Trump has a very good chance to emerge victorious.
Kornack, a host and reporter on MSNBC, said, of the states Trump needs to flip from blue to red, Pennsylvania is one of the most likely.
"Pennsylvania is probably one of his best prospects, maybe his best prospect, when you look at all the Obama states that Trump needs. He's going to have to get a couple of them if he's going to hit 270. I think the reason for it is because when you look deep in the polling there's this...cosmopolitan/blue collar divide. It's nothing new in politics. We've known for a while that it's there. It's nothing new in American culture. We've know it's there for a while. But Trump is really exacerbating it. You see it in these polls, white voters with college degrees, white voters without college degrees."
He pointed out that Donald Trump is polling much better now in his key demographics than Mitt Romney delivered four years ago.
"No Democrat has ever, even winning a Presidential election, has ever won the category of white voters with college degrees. Hillary Clinton is leading with that group. Yet, you've got polls this week that put Donald Trump ahead. How is he doing it? The reason is, he's taken what was already really strong Republican support among white voters without college degrees, blue collar white voters, he's taken a group that Romney won by about 25 points four years ago, he's up by like 40 with them right now. That divide, cosmopolitan/blue collar, whatever you want to call it, I think that's the story of the election and I think a state like Pennsylvania, a blue collar state, is really made for a candidate like Trump in that way."
Kornacki thinks Democrats over-estimated their level of support among white voters this election season, and it could end up costing them.
"Democrats have made a big bet. Long term, if you look at the demographic trends in this country, it is hard to argue with the bet they're making but I think what they're finding out, there was an assumption they made, and a lot of political analysts made this assumption too, they looked at the white vote in 2012 and they said this is what Barack Obama got, no Democrat can ever do worse than this among white voters, particularly among blue collar white voters. What they're finding four years later is they can. Right now, at least, Hillary Clinton is doing significantly worse with those voters than Barack Obama did."