Presidential races

Karl Rove: ‘I don’t see’ Trump winning the election

by Rebecca Savransky 10/23/16 03:34 PM CDT

Republican strategist Karl Rove on Sunday said he doesn’t expect Donald Trump to win the presidential election.

{mosads}”I don’t see it happening,” Rove said on “Fox News Sunday.”

If the GOP nominee “plays an inside straight, he could get it, but I doubt that he’s going to be able to play it,” Rove added.

Trump appears to be able to secure 186 electoral votes when counting the states where he is leading outside of the polling margin of error or is “thought comfortably put away,” Rove said.

“That compares to Romney’s 206,” Rove said.

“That’s Romney’s states minus Arizona and North Carolina, where he’s behind, and plus Iowa, where he’s ahead. There’s only one other — he’s ahead in Ohio by less than one point. That gets him to 214.”

Florida is the only other state in which the GOP nominee is within 4 points of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Rove said. With Florida, Trump would be at 243 electoral votes.

“And everything else ranges from 4.3 to 10 points — all the rest of the battleground states,” Rove said.

“He would have to not only win two states where he is either only slightly ahead or behind by four, but he would have to pick up states where he is behind, at, or above the national average,” Rove said.

Rove said “maybe” it could happen, but he doesn’t think it will.

“I doubt that in the just over two weeks that we’ve got left, conducting the kind of campaign that he is conducting,” Rove said, “that he’s going to be able to swing one out of every, you know, 10 voters, one out of every 12 voters, one out of every 15 voters and one out of every six voters in a state, and convert them.”

Trump is polling behind Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by 5.6 points, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. He is also trailing his Democratic rival in several battleground states.