This article is adapted from a case study commissioned by the Brookings Institution as part of its Profiles In Negotiation project. The full Brookings paper on the veterans deal is available here. Jill Lawrence is a columnist for Creators Syndicate and a contributing editor to U.S. News & World Report.

Nevermind the email server, Benghazi, Elizabeth Warren and all the other noise. The news Friday that Hillary Clinton has rented a campaign office in Brooklyn came on the heels of fresh polls last week that underscored a political truth: The former first lady, senator and secretary of state, who by all indications is on the brink of becoming an official presidential contender, remains the person to beat—both for the Democratic nomination and for the presidency itself.

Even as Clinton has tried to lay low and plan a campaign rollout, she has become embroiled in fresh controversies involving “secret emails,” foreign donations to the family’s foundation, apparent “special favors” from a federal official for her brother, Tony Rodham, and close friend Terry McAuliffe, and now—with the revelation that she wiped her personal email server clean—the prospect of congressional Republicans filing a lawsuit that could dog her throughout a White House bid. GOP investigators have even asked her to testify in private on Capitol Hill by May 1, nobody's idea of an ideal event for a launch season.


And there are factors beyond her control that could hurt her chances. It’s rare, for example, for a political party to win a third consecutive term and, for any nominee, it would be difficult to match President Barack Obama’s unique ability to galvanize minority voters. Yet for all her challenges, self-made and otherwise, Clinton has demographic advantages that could swing decisive battleground states her way. She is not young; she is not black; and she’s not a guy. All of which gives her an edge in her quest to succeed the young, black guy now occupying the Oval Office.

For reasons that are not pretty, nominating Clinton could stanch the flow of white seniors and white working-class voters, particularly men, away from the Democratic Party. “She’s white,” one national Democratic strategist says simply. “That’s going to make it easier for her in some places. The reality is race is still an issue in our society. We certainly see that in the way people vote.” Another party operative, a veteran of several presidential campaigns, was even more emphatic: “The race thing cannot be overstated. It’s like a shark. It’s so close to the surface in some places that you can see its fin.”

But there are also positive reasons for why Clinton may rally voters to the polls. Women of all ages and races who are electrified by the prospect of a female president would be an army for Clinton, much as black and youth voters were for Obama. And she’s not going to squander that opportunity this time around. From the moment her abbreviated biography hit Twitter (wife, mom, women’s advocate, hair icon, political pioneer) to 2015 schedule heavy with events focused on women, Clinton is already embracing her slice of history in a way that she never did in the 2008 race. Renee James, the president of Intel Corp., even introduced her at a recent women’s technology conference as “a modern-day suffragette.”

What does all of this mean for the 2016 electoral map? There would be some fundamentals working in Clinton’s favor if, as expected, she seeks and wins the Democratic nomination. One is that 18 states and the District of Columbia have gone for Democrats in every presidential election since 1992, for a total of 242 electoral votes—only 28 shy of the required 270. By contrast, only 13 states have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1992, and they amount to only 102 electoral votes. So Democrats have many more paths to 270.

The map for Clinton, as with any Democrat, starts with D.C. and the 18 solidly blue states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. Next come the battlegrounds: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.

In the 2012 presidential contest, the three most closely contested states were Florida and Ohio, which Obama won, and North Carolina, which Mitt Romney won. Together the three amount to 62 electoral votes. So Obama—who finished with 332 electoral votes—could have lost all three of those states and still have made it to 270. If Clinton held the 18 states that have voted Democratic since 1992, winning Florida and its 29 electoral votes would by itself seal a victory.

The third tier of the electoral map is aspirational, places where Obama and John Kerry, the 2004 nominee, competed or considered competing. That adds states trending away from Democrats, like Missouri and Montana, as well as those trending toward them, such as Georgia and Arizona. They would come into play as long shots worth pursuing if Clinton were confident she had already locked up 270 votes in other, less risky states.

Then there are the fantasies. Clinton ran in 2008 as the champion of “everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up” and “everyone who works hard and never gives up” and trounced Obama in primary states like West Virginia and Kentucky. But that was never going to translate into general-election victories, then or now. Nor do analysts like her chances in Arkansas, where she was first lady and practiced law for many years, or Indiana, which Obama won in 2008. “A wild card … just a total out-of-the-blue thing” unlikely to recur, political demographer William Frey says of Obama’s Indiana win.

Still, Clinton’s fighting-for-you brand—based more on guts and tenacity than any shared economic or cultural identity—could be crucial in states that are close but winnable. And that could make all the difference for her and her party.

Start with the upper Midwest and Pennsylvania. Mitch Stewart, who was Obama’s battleground states director in 2012 and now advises Ready for Hillary, an independent political action committee, puts Wisconsin in the swing-state category because “it became very, very competitive” after Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) joined the ticket in the No. 2 slot. He puts Pennsylvania there, too, because Obama won it by only about 5 percentage points in 2012. Clinton is uniquely positioned to hold those two states as well as Ohio, Stewart says, because of her “proven track record of building support among white, working-class voters” in the 2008 primaries.

The same appeal could also help her carry tippy states like Florida, which Obama won by less than 1 point in 2012, and North Carolina, which he lost by 2 points. “Where it will be surprising to people, she’ll do a couple of points better with white men, who have been really off the reservation in the Obama years,” says another Democratic strategist who worked for the Obama campaign. “They think she’s tough. A former secretary of state. Experienced. Smart.”

The effect would be magnified if Clinton were to run on an economic platform aimed squarely at working-class voters. “She has an opening,” says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. Obama’s difficulty with working-class men had “some racial element to it, for sure,” she says, but in 2012 “there was also a sense that his economic plan was better if you were younger and college-educated than if you were older and blue-collar.”

Clinton’s age could also prove advantageous. Obama lost seniors, once a reliable Democratic voting bloc, in both of his presidential races, while Clinton did well with them in the 2008 primaries and her 2006 Senate campaign in New York. Stoked by older women eager to see a female president in their lifetimes, she could rebuild with that age group in 2016. The impact would be felt most in Florida and Iowa, where exit polls show voters over 65 were about a quarter of the electorate in 2012, and in North Carolina, Ohio and Nevada, where they were between 18 and 21 percent.

While Frey says he “wouldn’t bet money” on a Clinton win in Florida, the former Obama strategist calls the state “a nice environment” for her even if former Governor Jeb Bush bags the Republican nomination. Here’s the strategist’s reasoning: A big chunk of Florida, maybe 70 percent, has never voted for Bush because he ran so long ago (1998 and 2002) and he ran in midterm elections that didn’t draw presidential-level turnout. The strategist also points to what happened when Charlie Crist, running for governor as a Democrat, found himself in trouble last year: “What cavalry did they call? Bill and Hillary.” (It didn’t work, of course; Crist ultimately lost to incumbent GOP Governor Rick Scott.)

Race is the great unknown for Clinton going forward, and it cuts both ways. Would she have trouble matching the 93- to 95-percent share of black voters won by the nation’s first black president? The consensus is that she would come close. The real question is whether black voters would turn out in force without Obama on the ballot. Lake predicts that any drop-off among black men would be offset by higher turnout by black women.

As for Hispanics, Republicans are doing themselves no favors with them as they fight Obama’s immigration policies in court and in Congress. And they could already be in a deeper hole than they know. Michael McDonald, who runs the United States Elections Project at the University of Florida, says national 2008 exit polls showed Obama winning 67 percent of the Hispanic vote, but actual voting data show that Obama’s share was in the high 70s. At the same time, he says, “the non-Hispanic white share of the electorate has been dropping. It’s been a steady decline from about 80 to 72 percent.”

Stewart, the former Obama battlegrounds director, predicts that Clinton will be “extremely competitive with the diverse coalition we put together.” Top Democratic pollster Mark Mellman notes that both Clintons have “their own long, historic, deep roots and strong relationships” with the black and Hispanic communities. “That’s going to matter a lot,” he says. “And being a Democrat is going to matter.”

A Republican ticket featuring a minority presidential or vice presidential nominee could scramble voting patterns enough to threaten Democrats. But the antidote for Clinton would be to do better than Obama with white voters. And for reasons both uplifting and unfortunate, there’s little doubt she would.