Washington Trump supporter: I have to be optimistic

The national presidential polls are all over the map. Some say Hillary Clinton will cakewalk through the electoral college to the White House, while others speculate Donald Trump will surprise with strong support in battleground states to pull off the victory. But there are few, if any, polls that are calling for a victory in Washington state, which has voted Democrat for president since 1984.

Related: Washington elector refuses to vote for Hillary Clinton

But one of Trump’s principal Washington organizers, State Sen. Doug Ericksen, is still holding his breath.

“We believe that we’ve been able to register a lot of new people in Washington state for Mr. Trump and they’re going to hopefully show up for election day and have an impact up and down the ballot in Washington,” said Ericksen, who represents the 42nd Legislative District.

Ericksen said he is focused on the poll that favors his party and Mr. Trump the most, the Investor’s Business Daily poll. That one shows Trump up by 2 percent nationwide. Ericksen also said a poll shows Trump ahead with expected voters by 15 percent in Florida and 8 percent in Ohio, which are crucial states to a Trump upset. That is contradictory to the numbers put forth by Nate Silver, the analyst KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson trusts most. Silver sees Clinton ahead in the battleground states of Nevada, Florida and North Carolina.

Ericksen says polling data can be untrustworthy.

“Polling has become such an effort to sway public opinion, gauge public opinion,” he said. “It’s all about how you try to measure voter turnout. I think they are using honest methodology in some of them but many of them are using the 2012 voter-turnout model and we just aren’t using a 2012 voter turnout model coming into play in this year’s election.”

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But, Dori asked, Ericksen isn’t under any pretense that Trump could win Washington state (less than 3 percent chance, according to Silver), does he? To that, Ericksen breathed deeply before responding: “I have to be optimistic, Dori. I’m not gonna be Pollyanna, but I also think that there is a chance. It all depends on energy and those newly registered voters. We saw a record number of newly registered voters in Washington state this year and a lot of those people are people who let their voter registration lapse, and so they had to re-register to vote. We identified about 500,000 people in Washington state whose voter registrations had lapsed.”

As for his final electoral count prediction, Ericksen said, “I think Mr. Trump will come in north of 280 electoral votes all said and done tomorrow night.”

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