Mayor Bloomberg, do not get into this race. It’s not due to the fact that you have horrible positions on gun rights, or your ridiculous stances on soda sizes. It’s because you cannot win, even if it’s a Trump/Sanders battle for the White House:
Only if the self-avowed Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders were to cop the Democratic nomination and square off against reality-TV star Trump could these would-be Bloomberg supporters imagine him making the race — and even then, there were doubts.'The mayor doesn't play to lose. I see a very unlikely scenario of him entering the race unless he has calculated that he is going to win,' said Anthony Scaramucci, managing partner of investment firm SkyBridge Capital and a backer of former candidate Jeb Bush. 'That means in my mind that non-establishment players have to be the nominees of both parties and he has to have a really good sense that there is a path up the middle that can get him a win and that means an Electoral College win.' "
Except that there isn’t a path in the Electoral College. As with most cases, the Democrat will take the liberal state and the Republican will take the most conservative. Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report is very honest with the former New York City mayor’s chances in 2016. Two hundred forty three electoral votes are already out his reach; 295 votes are within reach, but it’s highly unlikely he could nab those key, must-win key states in that bloc of votes in a landscape dominated by the two-party system.
In the case that no one wins a majority of the Electoral College, it’s almost assured that the House of Representatives, which would most likely maintain a Republican majority, are not going to cast their votes for an urban-based liberal over Trump. If Bloomie does run, it would be fiery Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry car crash:
Running as a moderate (or centrist, if you prefer), Bloomberg would have little or no chance of carrying the most ideological states and the most partisan ones. Not surprisingly, the two groups overlap, according to a recent Gallup analysis of state partisanship and ideology.Gallup found Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Utah, Arkansas, Tennessee, Montana, Idaho, Oklahoma and South Carolina are the nation’s most conservative states. Bloomberg could not carry any of them.
To those, I would add Gallup’s most reliably Republican presidential states that are not already on the most conservative list: Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kentucky, West Virginia, Missouri, Texas and Georgia.
Voters in those 20 states, with 166 electoral votes, would be very likely to support a conservative and/or a Republican, not an elitist Manhattan billionaire independent who occupies the left on guns, the size of soft drinks and other issues.
Bloomberg would also have trouble carrying the most liberal and Democratic states in the country, since they are most likely to respond favorably to a progressive nominated by the Democratic Party.
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Using the Gallup categories as a guide, I count 29 states (plus D.C.) with 243 electoral votes as starting out of Bloomberg’s reach. That leaves 21 states, with 295 electoral votes, as potentially winnable (assuming that Bloomberg makes it on all state ballots).
Those states would be “winnable,” at least in theory, because either they are less partisan and less ideological and therefore might find a moderate independent appealing, have shown an unusual willingness to support independent candidates (Maine and Alaska, but also Connecticut), or might be places where Bloomberg would have unique appeal.
Bloomberg would need to win 270 of the available 295 electoral votes, a virtual impossibility considering that some states would be particularly difficult for him in a three-way race – e.g., Alaska, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, North Carolina and Ohio.
Then again, Rothenberg does mention that a Bloomberg candidacy would serve as the Democrats’ Perot, siphoning more Democratic voters away than Republicans in the general. This could lead to the GOP taking key swing states, taking the election to the House, and the inauguration of President Donald Trump (in this scenario), which was one of the reasons why he’s considering getting in the race: to stop people like the Donald. So, this seems like a fool’s errand. Also, any die-hard Second Amendment supporter, along with the NRA and Gun Owners of America, is going to do everything they can to stop Bloomberg, which could increase GOP turnout, and, again, make it harder for Democrats to win the election.