http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/clintons-new-reality-a-dogfight-with-trump-223549Clinton’s new reality: A dogfight with Trump
A race against an unconventional foe is looking like a conventional, 2012-style battle.
By Annie Karni
05/25/16 05:19 AM EDT
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LOS ANGELES — Staring at national polls showing Hillary Clinton in a statistical dead heat with Donald Trump, Democrats are settling into a new reality: a race against the most untraditional political foe is shaping up to be a conventional, 2012-style battle.
With Republican voters beginning to fall in line behind their presumptive nominee, the election is expected to be tight and hard-fought in the battleground states the same way it was four years ago when a more formulaic candidate, Mitt Romney, was the GOP nominee — with key counties won or lost based on hyperlocal organizing efforts mimicking precinct fights in local races.
Trump’s unorthodox campaign style, marked by personal attacks and contradictory positions, has many Democratic voters believing the matchup against Clinton will be something extraordinary, the likes of which the country has never seen before. That may be true in terms of the nature of the debate, but recent polls foreshadow a more ordinary election that breaks along familiar party lines just like it did between Romney and President Barack Obama.
“It’s not going to be some bizarre election in which one of them pulls out ahead, stays ahead, and does so by mobilizing their base,” said Jonathan Cowan, a former Clinton White House official who is president of the moderate think tank Third Way.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last week showed Clinton and Trump virtually tied, with Clinton leading by 3 points. And a recent CBS News/New York Times poll had Clinton beating Trump 47 percent to 41 percent — a narrowing of her 10-point lead from last month.
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