I see Trump as being like one of those characters in the olden-day cartoons, where a guy would step off the ledge of a cliff and keep walking in mid-air, not realizing he’s in mid-air, until he looks down and then gravity suddenly takes effect.
Last time I checked, Trump was trailing Hillary by 12 percent. That is a surprisingly small margin considering how much a buffoon Trump is, and how experienced and seasoned a candidate Hillary is. One would reasonably expect Hillary to be leading by 25 percentage points or more.
To put this in perspective, Gerald Ford, a far more respectable person than Trump, once trailed Jimmy Carter by a whopping **33% **in the polls in the 1976 election. He eventually came back to lose the election by a margin of only 2% in the popular vote.
Four years later, Ronald Reagan trailed Carter by 29% in the polls at one point, but overcame all of that to rout Carter in an Electoral College landslide victory.
Eight years later, George H.W. Bush trailed Dukakis by 17% in the polls, but eventually overcame that to win a landslide victory, too.
Twelve years later, Al Gore once trailed George W. Bush by 17% in the polls, but came all the way back to win the popular vote on Election Day, although losing the Electoral College.
All of these cited examples - Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Gore - were eminently more dignified and respectable politicians than Trump. So how is it that Trump faced a narrower losing margin than them?
There is one big difference, of course, which is that Trump has no direction to go but down, and will ultimately of course still lose to Hillary in a landslide. But based off where Trump *ought *to be at this point, by how much is he over-performing and beating the model? Is he polling about 15% higher than he statistically ought to?
Today’s polls are meaningless. They have been for a year. They will be tomorrow. Maybe, possibly, to a certain extent, the polls might be a little bit meaningful starting in September.
Of course Wang gives the very appropriate cautions:
Polls now tell us something. What demographics are responding how in the moment.
Trump is the (problematic) nominee of a major party that has not lost by more than 8 points since 1964 and has had some blow out victories along the way. Not sure where he “should” be polling given that.
Unlike past candidates Trump is volatile and unpredictable. He might wage a comeback and draw closer or pull ahead, or he might continue to sink and sink further until it becomes obvious he won’t win and he either gets badly defeated or withdraws in favor of a more electable candidate. But either way I don’t think the poll performances of past candidates has any bearing whatever on Trump’s chances.
There’s a historically more accurate form of polling: betting odds. The last time betting odds favored a losing candidate was 1916. And Clinton is a strong favorite over Trump.
I think the polling is pretty accurate in tracking how voters are firming up their decisions in a primary season that offered an unreasonable number of choices. Both Clinton and Trump have a strong base of people who are voting for or against one of them. The rest are migrating one direction or the other, and because Trump is acting insane their mainly migrating away from him. If this keeps up Hillary is looking at at 60/40 win which is a landslide in presidential elections on a popular vote basis, and maybe even in states as well. There talking heads are saying there may be a very low turnout this year, something that may tighten it up for Trump but at this pace not enough to make a difference in November. My conclusion is that the volatility in polls right now simply reflects the lack of commitment to one candidate by a slightly larger than normal number of people.
Some people say that but really betting sites are probably about the same accuracy as averaging reliable polls. I mean how do you think people decide where to lay bets?
That aggregated polls (when available) did better than the betting markets did not surprise me (after all Wang’s pure poll approach has been giving odds not too far off from the betting markets) … but online Survey Monkey doing the best??? That surprises. Hard to believe really.
FWIW its current numbers are also Clinton +7 in the RV universe.
If current trends don’t reverse, Clinton should have an easy win. But say what you will about Clinton and Trump, they’re not bland. There are plenty of voters who actively hate both of them. That could motivate voter turn out.
If there’s any credit I give him for, its that Trump is unpredictable. Surely after the election someone will come up with a formula that ties in the polls and their predictability for 2016 with past polls, but I suspect it may be a harder job that simply going with what’s working.
When it comes to this year, I think this xkcd comic will be telling: Electoral Precedent
Instead of saying what will never happen and being wrong when it does, maybe we can try the opposite. Come November 2016, we’ll be saying one of the following:
It doesn’t matter that Clinton is historically disliked, she ran against the one guy who was even more disliked than she is. Bernie made a lot of noise in the primaries and Democrats like to fall in love, but in the end, they fell in line and voted for her. None of the GOP attacks on her mattered because they’ve been attacking her for 30 years and that simply gets old. Nothing new will pop up with her, Americans realized Benghazi was full of shit and did anyone really think some emails would have disqualified her?
Trump captured the country like no one ever has. His TV background and histrionic personality was exactly what woke the country up from its stupor. In this age of 24 hour news and the internet, a candidate has to evolve to appeal to what people are paying attention to. Americans don’t want boring, complicated speeches, they want soundbites that zings the other person. After enduring wars and a recession and historically high levels of income gap between the rich and poor, they’re ready to follow anyone as long as he tells them what they want to hear. Candidates in the future better smarten up and realize that their sobering reality is no match for a comforting fantasy
What makes this election different than many in the past is the fact that both candidates are more widely known to the electorate than in many of the cases you cite.
Carter was “Jimmy Who” 1n '76. Dukakis was a relative unknown. Gore had spent 8 years in Clinton’s (big) shadow.
Even people who don’t follow politics can ID Hillary and Donald.
Given the trend of ideological polarization over the last decades, one would expect less volatility in the presidential polling. That is, people are a lot more aligned with their tribal partisan affiliation and less likely to “cross the aisle,” which means we would expect most modern elections to lack gaps greater than 15 points or so.
I suspect that phenomenon alone is enough to explain the OP.
Very true. It’s another unknown in this election, we haven’t had two candidates with such high negatives before. I thought 2008 hit new levels of negativity, that wasn’t anything compared to this.