According to a recent analysis conducted by the Morning Consult, which polled 44,000 respondents, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and his rival, senator Ted Cruz, would get demolished by Democrat Hillary Clinton if the presidential election were held today.
In a head-to-head matchup, Donald Trump loses in almost every swing state (save, interestingly enough, left-leaning Maine), taking only 210 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 328. (270 are needed to win .)
Cruz fares even worse, with 206 EC votes to Clinton’s 332, losing in every swing state and barely holding onto the typically red states of Georgia and Alaska.
Ohio governor John Kasich, who trails Trump and Cruz in the party primaries by a considerable margin, is the only Republican candidate the poll projects as beating Clinton. He wins in key swing states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado, and North Carolina; and even manages to siphon off Oregon, Maine, and Minnesota—states that tend to vote Democratic in general elections.
Morning Consult has him winning 304 EC votes to Clinton’s 234—a margin of nearly 100 over Cruz and Trump.
But Kasich is an extreme long-shot to win the nomination. He is basing his strategy on Trump failing to win enough delegates to secure the nomination outright. That would lead to a brokered convention where all bets are off, and delegates can switch their votes to the candidate of their choosing.
But even under that scenario, Cruz is outpacing him in the backroom campaign to woo individual delegates.