From the first Morning Jolt of the week…

Three Key Swing States That Currently Don’t Look So Bad for Trump
As August approaches its end, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign remains in generally bad shape, but not quite hopeless.
One of the odd aspects of this year is that Trump is collapsing in some key states (Virginia, Colorado) and has managed to put some traditionally Republican states in play (Georgia, Missouri, maybe Arizona)… but at the same time, a couple of swing states that have proven difficult for Republican presidential candidates in past cycles don’t look so bad. For example, Hillary Clinton is barely ahead in Iowa. Obama won this state by 6 points in 2012 and by nearly 10 in 2008, and George W. Bush barely won it 2004 and barely lost it in 2000.
Trump was in Iowa this weekend. The state has only six electoral votes, but if Trump won a state that Republicans had lost in three of the past four election cycles, that would represent a victory for Trumpism, at least once piece of evidence that populist Republicanism can win in some places that traditional GOP conservatism hasn’t.
If Trump manages to win the Hawkeye state, some might argue it just represents the state’s demographics; Iowa is 91 percent white. But by that measure, Hillary Clinton should be running away with these other two key swing states. Nevada is another state where Clinton is ahead, but within the margin of error.
Nevada is the most diverse battleground state. On paper, it should be secure for Democrats. But there are enough people like Wheeler, still rattled by the recession and frustrated about other things, to make it one of Trump’s best swing states.
Democrats and Republicans agree that the state’s competitiveness is not just a quirk of public polling, which has a spotty track record in Nevada, but is reflected in private surveys, the tightness of Nevada’s races for the U.S. Senate and House, and the observations of seasoned political operatives.
“Nevada’s a picture of where the country’s at,” said Yvanna Cancela, political director of the Culinary Union, which represents nearly 60,000, mostly immigrant workers in casinos and hotels on the Strip. “It’s increasingly diverse but the ideas of nationalism, open borders are very much at play here.”
Perhaps Nevadans think of Donald Trump as a beloved longtime employer. Obama won this state comfortably both times, and Bush won it narrowly twice. Nevada is another six electoral votes.
Perhaps most significantly, about half the polls in Florida have Trump within a point or two, and without Johnson and Stein, Trump does even better. This morning Arian Campo-Flores and Paul Overberg of the Wall Street Journal identifies a demographic trend that is mitigating the conventional wisdom that growth in Florida’s minority population would make the state unwinnable: white retirees keep moving there.
That trend is partly offset by another set of new residents—white retirees, many from GOP-leaning areas of the country. Though Florida has long been a destination for white retirees, they have arrived in larger numbers in recent years as a stronger economy and rising property values made it easier to move, economists and local officials say.
A net 7,800 white, non-Hispanic residents left Florida in the recession year of 2008, but whites streamed back as the economy picked up, topping a net 94,000 arrivals in 2014.
“The interplay between the share of the white vote and the share of the Hispanic vote will keep the state relatively competitive for a while,” said Democratic strategist Steve Schale, who managed Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign in Florida.
And the Journal team notes that just because a person moves to a state, it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily going to turn out to vote:
Yet Democrats face a challenge in motivating Hispanic newcomers to register and turn out to vote. “We have folks here who are just worried about landing a job, finding a place to live,” said Samí Haiman-Marrero, who has worked on civic-engagement projects aimed at Puerto Ricans. “There is a certain period of time that is invested in getting that straight before they can think about voting.”
Mind you, few polls show Trump outright leading in these states, and if he doesn’t win North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, winning these states won’t mean as much.