Recent news reports claimed that 68 percent of Donald Trump supporters would be willing to vote for him if he ran for president as an independent.
Sounds awful, but what does it really mean?
About 35 percent of registered voters are Republicans. Polls have Trump with the support of about 27 percent of registered Republicans; 27 percent of the 35 percent of registered Republicans gives him about 9.5 percent of Republicans.
However, if he runs as an independent he gets only 68 percent of his supporters to vote for him. At that point, he would have 68 percent of the 9.5 percent, which is about 6 percent.
Finally, since only about 60 percent of registered voters vote in presidential elections, he would get only about 3.5 percent of the voters.
Does anyone think he would stick around to spend millions to have such a poor showing?
Russell Richards, Rangeley
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