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PITTSBURGH -- Charlie Cook believes Democrat Hillary Clinton will be the next president, but said Donald Trump could pull off an upset if he can do something no GOP nominee has done since 1988: carry Pennsylvania.
Cook, who began working in Washington, D.C. in 1972, is the editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report. He regularly appears on several national television networks.
He addressed oil and natural gas industry leaders Wednesday during the 2016 DUG East Conference in downtown Pittsburgh.
"I think Clinton is going to win, but I think it is going to stay relatively close," he said of the presumed Clinton vs. Trump race.
Cook said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, remains in contention to be Clinton's vice presidential running mate, but Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., seems to be a more probable choice.
He believes it is unlikely Clinton will pick Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
"Why would I want to pick (Warren) and say, 'I just got my last contribution from Wall Street,'" Cook said regarding Warren's reputation for favoring high taxes and stringent regulation of business.
Cook said recent polls show 56 percent of Americans view Clinton unfavorably, but more -- 61 percent -- feel the same way about Trump.
"He's not going to get stopped at this convention," Cook said of GOP efforts to derail Trump at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next month.
Although he believes Trump's chances for victory in November are small, Cook said it would be possible if the billionaire businessman could rally blue-collar, independent-minded voters to the polls in "battleground" states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. He said these are states that went for President Barack Obama in 2012 in which Trump may contend, along with Michigan, Virginia, Florida, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Colorado.
"The preponderance of Trump's supporters are sort of white, working-class voters with less than a college degree," Cook said.
Cook said Clinton will likely outperform Trump among people who live in suburbs of large cities because they are more likely to be college-educated.
Cook said Clinton maintains several advantages over Trump heading into November, including the fact that states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, California, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts and others have not gone Republican at any point since the 1980s. Democrats simply outnumber Republicans, he added, while Clinton has raised more in campaign cash and has a larger, more organized campaign team than Trump.
"It's really more like the circus moving from town to town than having a national campaign," Cook said of the Trump campaign holding rallies across the U.S.
Cook spoke highly of Ohio Gov. John Kasich and potential future presidential aspirations, and said someone who could be somewhat conservative on economic issues while being moderate on social issues would likely succeed in a general election. But the polarization of the nominating process makes this difficult, he said.