[Senator Clay Davis]

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is redirecting his attention to traditionally Democratic states in the final days of the 2016 campaign in an urgent attempt to expand what for weeks has been an increasingly narrow path to victory.

Following FBI Director James B. Comey’s surprise announcement Friday that the agency would once again examine emails related to Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state, Trump and his advisers see a fresh opportunity to make gains in states that most public polls have shown as out of reach. They spent the weekend deliberating ways to seize on what they see as a dramatic turn in the campaign’s closing chapter and scramble the political map following a rough stretch beset by controversy.

Trump held rallies Sunday in Colorado and New Mexico, and he was scheduled to make two stops Monday in Michigan — and visit Wisconsin the day after that.

Clinton, meanwhile, is focused on shoring up turnout and enthusiasm, particularly among minority voters, in such critical battlegrounds as North Carolina, Florida and Ohio. Early voting data from Ohio contains ominous signs of a lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, notably in places such as Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, where high black turnout propelled President Obama to victory in 2008 and 2012.

Trump campaign chief executive Stephen K. Bannon has settled on three states in particular — Michigan, Wisconsin and New Mexico — where the candidate and campaign will devote more time and money, said four people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal campaign talks. All three states were won by Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Bannon believes that if GOP voters rapidly “come home” nationally in light of recent events, that turnout plus late-breaking support among independents and blue-collar workers could bring new states into play beyond Pennsylvania, Nevada and Colorado — Democratic strongholds where Trump has been campaigning for months and remains behind, the people said.

Democrats and many Republicans remain skeptical that Trump can reach 270 electoral votes with this 11th-hour ploy or any other. But Trump strategists argued Sunday that the race’s fast-changing dynamics and unpredictability give them an opening despite polling and fundamentals leaning in Clinton’s favor.

These advisers privately described Trump’s path to the White House not as a direct shot but as a series of razor-thin upsets in several much-discussed battlegrounds, as well as unexpected bank shots in blue states. All of it would depend on better-than-expected Republican support nationally, they said.

In Nevada, Florida and Colorado — states Obama won — early and absentee turnout has been strong overall and is so far on track to match or exceed 2012 levels, according to available data.

But in Iowa and Ohio, turnout levels have been low. Take Cuyahoga County in Ohio, a Democratic stronghold, where in-person and absentee voting is down by more than 50 percent, compared with a similar period in 2012. That is in part because of the state’s cutback in early voting days, but it does not bode well for Democrats’ efforts to capitalize on their historic strength with the early vote.

Disproportionately high black turnout in Cuyahoga and Franklin counties were important factors in helping Obama eke out a two-point win in that state over Mitt Romney in 2012, said Cornell Belcher, one of Obama’s pollsters in 2008 and 2012.

“You don’t see the sort of energy there this time around as you saw before,” Belcher said. “If on Election Day our electorate is 74 percent white, Hillary Clinton is probably not going to be president.”

In North Carolina, another battleground that Trump almost certainly must win to take the White House, Democratic turnout has fallen compared with 2012 in early voting — although Democrats continue to maintain a significant lead over Republicans. Black turnout has also come up short.

Clinton senior adviser Joel Benenson struck an optimistic note over the weekend, noting that black turnout in early voting on Saturday in pivotal counties in both Ohio and North Carolina exceeded 2012 levels, which he cast as a microcosm of enthusiasm and engagement among that group.

“For voters of color, this is the first time in their life that they’re hearing from a presidential candidate the kind of racially divisive rhetoric they’ve heard from Donald Trump in this campaign,” Benenson said. “That is going to be on the minds of every voter on Election Day.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...1613&tid=ss_tw