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To listen to leading Republicans the Donald Trump campaign is as good as dead and buried.

The Grand Old Party never wanted the billionaire media mogul as their candidate.

Having been lumbered with him, some tried to make the campaign work despite the insults, the casual racism, overt sexism and the mocking of the disabled.

For a brief period he was neck and neck with Hillary Clinton into the national polls .

Then came the watershed release at the weekend of tapes in which Trump makes lewd and obscene comments towards women.

Since then his ratings have gone into freefall and dozens of Republicans have disowned his candidacy.

Is there any chance he could still win the Presidency on November 8?

The maths is against him

(Image: REUTERS/Jonathan Drake)

To win the White House you need to win 270 electoral college votes.

Americans vote by state and each state then has an allotted number of electoral college votes.

This is where it gets hard for Trump.

The Democrats already have 242 electoral college votes in the bank.

These come from the 18 states - the Blue Wall - which have voted Democrat for the last six presidential elections.

As none of them look set to turn red (the Republican colour) in 2016 Clinton needs to find just 28 more electoral college votes.

Trump needs to protect the 206 electoral college votes won by Mitt Romney in 2012 and then find another 64.

The conventional path looks tough

(Image: AFP)

Firstly, it is not a given that Trump can hold all the 206 seats won by the Republicans in 2012.

Some of the states picked up by Romney such as Georgia and Arizona are now in play and could go to Clinton.

Clinton is also marginally ahead in North Carolina one of the two states (Indiana is the other) which switched from Obama to Romney in 2012 .

The most direct path to the White House is to win in Florida (29 electoral college votes), Ohio (18) and Pennsylvania (20).

If Trump can win in all three of these he will have the keys to the White House.

But the latest polls have Clinton 3% ahead in Florida, 4% in Ohio and a staggering 8.6% in Pennsylvania.

He could try the road through the Rust Belt

With the conventional road all but blocked Trump could try to take another route to power: through the Rust Belt.

These are the former heavily industrialised states of Pennsylvania (20 electoral college votes), Ohio (18), Michigan (16), and Wisconsin (10) which have been receptive to Trump’s appeal.

If Trump can win in all four of these he can start furniture shopping in Washington DC.

With larger than average white populations suffering from the decline in steel, automotive and mining industries they are the Republican’s key audience.

But, as noted above, Pennsylvania is leaning heavily towards Clinton and Ohio narrowly to the Democrat.

In Wisconsin she has a 6% lead according to the latest polls and in Michigan a 7% lead.

So is there any way he could win?

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Trump’s biggest problem is the number of people he’s insulted.

In 2012 93% of African Americans, 71% of Hispanics and 73% of Asians voted for Obama.

Mr Trump has alienated all these constituencies with his talk of building walls, labelling Mexicans rapists and xenophobic outbursts.

Unsurprisingly, he has also upset women voters , a mere half of the electorate, with his sexist comments and stance on abortion.

The religious right - once the backbone of the Republican - has had its patience tested.

Which leaves him pitching for the white, male, blue collar vote.

In Britain these voters helped win the referendum on Brexit but only when combined with legions of middle class Tory voters in the shires.

Trump has been written off before

(Image: REUTERS/Mike Segar)

Trump was written off when he ran for the Republican nomination.

His rivals spent millions of dollars to try to keep him off the ticket.

In the end they could not counter his crude but effective message that spoke to those fed up with big government, unsettled by globalisation and angry with having to take low-paid, insecure jobs.

Hillary may have the experience but her appeal is limited, especially in middle America, and she has been damaged by the use of private email accounts when Secretary of State.

It will take a remarkable turnaround in Trump’s fortunes for him to win but politics has never been so febrile.