Trump Can Still Win US Presidential Election Amid WikiLeaks’ Revelations

Despite trailing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in new opinion polls by margins of more than 10 percent, Republican nominee Donald Trump can still win the US presidential election in November, analysts told Sputnik.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Democrats have repeatedly attempted to dismiss the revealing emails posted by WikiLeaks as "fake," claiming the leaks are part of a "Russian misinformation" campaign.

"Yes: Trump can still win," University of Houston Chair of History and African American Studies Professor Gerald Horne said on Tuesday. "Trump voters are highly motivated. They are more likely to go to the polls."

Also, despite the controversies surrounding him and the widely publicized defection of many senior figures from the Republican Party, Trump was still likely to win a majority of white voters in the US electorate, Horne maintained.

"The Democrats have not won a majority of the white vote since 1964."

Trump had a strategy of wooing Heartland and industrial state working class voters that could still bring him victory, Horne suggested.

"Trump still has a path to 270 votes in the Electoral College. He must win Florida, where he has a residence and where he is within the margin of error. He must win Ohio where his prospects are good. He must win Pennsylvania, which I concede maybe very difficult."

The passing of laws by many US state legislatures insisting that voters had to show valid current identification also tilted voting patterns potentially in Trump’s favor, Horne noted.

Potential Trump voters "are more likely to have IDs in an election when the laws in many states have been changed to require such identification before casting ballots," he said.

The infrastructure for broad participation in the US election was also likely to disproportionately favor Trump over the Democrats, with their appeal to ethnic minorities, Horne argued.

"The voting machines are more likely to work in white neighborhoods and there are less likely to be long lines to discourage potential voters. Voting machines and procedures across the United States are archaic and antiquated and because of racism they are more so in black neighborhoods."

Horne also cautioned against uncritically accepting the accuracy of opinion polls that currently suggested a decisive Clinton victory.

"Opinion polls in the United States do not have a good record [of accuracy]… I refer you to the polls in Great Britain before Brexit that suggested Brexit would not take place — but it did."

Political commentator and author James Bovard acknowledged that the polls currently suggested a decisive defeat for Trump, but said more embarrassing revelations about Hillary Clinton could still reverse that dynamic.

"The Republican backlash further transforms the Trump campaign into a version of George Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn" when the US hero and his Seventh cavalry were destroyed by Native American warriors in 1876, Bovard suggested.

However, more WikiLeaks disclosures embarrassing to Clinton could still transform the campaign, he concluded.