title:  This Map Explains GOP Panic: Dems Headed For EPIC Landslide Win (TWEET)
text: The Republican Party is panicking over Donald Trump s presidential campaign in a way most Americans have never seen, and certainly haven t seen in over fifty years. Political party conventions have evolved until recently into carefully stage-managed infomercials for the parties and their ideals, but now there is a very real shadow operation under way between Trump and the other campaigns to control the outcome of the actual delegate votes, in order to force or avoid a contested convention.In case you might, as many liberals have, assume that a lot of this is theater being put together by the party   it isn t. The data Republican Party leaders are looking at has them reaching for their heartburn medication, because it forecasts an epic wipeout for the party of Lincoln.Statistical guru Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight put together what a presidential electoral map between frontrunners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would look like   and the GOP loses even worse than they did in the 2012 and 2008 elections. In the electoral college it would be 374 Democrats, 164 Republicans:Here's what the map might look like in an election held today. Trump's Rust Belt strength would help him keep MO, IN pic.twitter.com/OYueYvWFpG  Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 24, 2016Silver bases his data on recent polling of a head to head matchup between Trump and Clinton. Those numbers are also the thing of Republican nightmares.The two most recent nationwide electoral polls (Fox News, Bloomberg) show Clinton winning the race by 11% and 18%. The most recent poll before that, Quinnipiac, has her margin of victory at a still respectable 6%.If the margin of victory is between 10-11%, Silver s model shows states like Georgia and North Carolina flipping to Democrats and eating into the Republican hold on the South. It also shows Democrats winning Arizona (current polling there shows Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick tied with Sen. John McCain). It confines Republicans to the plains and most, but not all, of the Bible Belt states.Derailing Trump s nomination won t be easy to do, but for the GOP party establishment its preferable than what the numbers are currently forecasting: total disaster.Featured image via Flickr