Doesn’t look like it to me. When it stops, we’ll see a couple of polls showing a static race or a Clinton recovery compared to their last poll. So far, all the polls show Trump rising from what the same pollsters found last time they polled. RCP average continues to move towards Trump: Clinton +0.7-0.9 as of Monday.
538’s “nowcast” shows that Hillary bottomed out 4 days ago, but we won’t know for sure for another several days, and then the debate reaction will be the thing to look at.
Addie, I know that you are aware that all the current polls reflect the week of the pneumonia and are before she returned to the trail and before Trump reignited Birtherism rick-rolling the media in the process. They reflect pretty much exactly to the day before the op said Donald just lost.
This next week is where we will judge if the day mentioned in this op is where Trump lost the election for good. 538’s odds have stabilized at around 60/40, where they had been before the conventions. Even in that week Fox had him still behind and only Rasmussen had him ahead.
As the next week’s sets of polls dribble in we judge the OP’s perspicacity. Do they start coming back up? Do 538’s odd start a climb that does not look back?
Stay tuned!
THe Nowcast has stabilized, yet there are no polls showing Clinton regaining lost ground.
There have been state polls showing that, and the majority of national polls still show Clinton ahead. 538 uses both state and national polls.
In the ‘hypocrisy!’ game, the two examples are almost never really the same. And I’m not sure you’re really saying they are in this case, but rather that it’s somewhat dissonant to say Clinton never had anything to do with birtherism because ‘it was only her supporters’. It’s doubtful that standard would be applied against politicians the same person disliked. But it was still basically false for Trump to claim Clinton started birtherism, as well as irrelevant to his own flogging of the issue for years and years.
Anyway the underlying cases are not at all the same either. A number of Kerry’s fellow veterans apparently really thought he was a bad actor. You can say they shouldn’t have felt that way, were influenced by personal jealousy or politics at the time, or their later political beliefs, and others didn’t feel that way. But the core of the story was what actual people who served with Kerry felt based on what they’d personally experienced. There’s nothing at all at the core of birtherism, no personal experience as well as no documentary evidence.
I’m not sure I understand why those statements would be at odds with each other. If the polls stay the same the predictions should stay the same over the course of a few days.
If the race were to end today, my guess is that Clinton would win it 273 to 265. A bit of good news for Clinton is that she appears to be holding off Trump in PA. The problem is, PA might no longer be enough. NH and CO are states she has to worry about now given Clinton’s weakness in OH and FL. It’s also possible – though the chances are still somewhat slim – that Trump could somehow expand his map in WI and MN.
The fear I have for Clinton is the debates – I hope she looks really good in them, especially the first one. If Trump pulls off an upset and scores a decisive victory, Clinton’s chances go way, way down and I don’t think she can come back. And terrorism such as the kinds we’ve just had today probably gives Trump a slight edge as well.
Clinton does have a lot of money and a good organization, and the race could well come down to those final 2 weeks of pounding the phone banks and on doors. In the end, though, I really think this is about personality politics and an undeclared culture war that Americans seem to be fighting among themselves.
Donald’s birtherism controversy is pretty much over and done with, though it did stop Clinton’s slide and it might in fact motivate more African Americans to go to the polls. But it’s not an issue being dragged out over a series of days with shocking headline and soundbyte after shocking soundbyte, like in his previous disasters in early June and late July.
The debates will be the thing to watch.
It would had been, if Trump and the Republicans had bothered to just leave that bit behind, but they made the mistake of listening to Breitbart and Trump for the “news of then” as a reliable source and pushed a couple of more lies in the way of “burying” the birther issue. Seeing all the Republican party jump to defend Trump for those new lies has been amusing and worrisome.
I don’t think the birtherism fiasco is over. It’s just that the recent bombings have pushed it out of the news. But it will be back, a gift that keeps on giving.
magellan01, I’d hate to see this post lost in the shuffle. I’m sure you’ve been waiting anxiously for the above admission, and are no doubt crafting your agreement that Trump lied about Clinton and birther rumor as I write this. I’m just reposting this to make it easier to reply on a more current page.
Let’s make this absolutely positively perfectly clear. There is absolutely zero chance of a decisive victory by Trump in any debate. Zero.
Of course there is also no chance of Clinton scoring a decisive victory in a debate.
It just is not how the debates work.
“Work”? What would that look like? Hillary will propose policies which Trump will criticize with polite and insightful questions, based on the facts and statistics at his very fingertips?
Or will Trump Gish Gallop to the finish line, spewing a machine gun of bullshit and half-truths. She will intelligently rebut some of them, but not all, because you can’t catch every snowflake in an avalanche. Trump will declare victory even if his pants actually do start to blaze.
Will that work?
(Personally, I still don’t think he’ll do it. But I accept the truth that reasoning doesn’t help much in an insane situation. Hell is the impossiblity of reason, said some guy, poor bastard.)
Trump destroyed his opponents in the Republican debates. There’s no reason he couldn’t do it now. He will ignore the rules, bluster, lie, insult everyone, curse at the moderators, and people will think he looks strong and decisive. If Clinton tries to be assertive, people will think she is a bitch. That’s how the debates will work.
I do not see it that way, I agree with Dsaid because before they were fighting in the Republican sand box, with a much more supportive audience and media. Going to the park at large Trump is not going to have the same crowds, as just bit more than half of them will not agree with him.
Her free fall has finally stopped, after all these months? 
And would that constitute a “win”?
I agree that what worked against the republicans won’t necessarily work against Hillary Clinton, but he’s working with Roger Ailes – he’ll try his hand at conventional debating. He’ll probably speak a lot without actually saying anything. Fewer jokes about the size of dick but still not much substance. He’ll probably say things like “We gotta be very tough with Muslims – I don’t know what we do but we gotta be tough.” And then it’s up to Lester Holt to press and demand specifics…which won’t happen. Then it’ll be up to Hillary to demand specifics, which could get interesting.
But beyond that, I think Hillary will have to show some convictions and that she’s somehow more than just a school marm. I don’t think aggression necessarily works against her as long as it’s controlled.
The GOP debate stage - a crowded field that literally prevented any responses of substance in rooms packed with audiences encouraged to be part of the show and aimed at a viewing audience that was a fraction of the general electorate and not very reflective of it - is very different than the one on one stage of a general debate. Both in format and in where the viewing crowd is at.
Trump for all his many flaws does have some skills and what he does well is read the crowd of the room he is in and play emotional riffs off of what they respond to. The GOP viewership fed off those responses.
That element is extremely muted in the general election debate format. They are pretty strict about keeping the crowd response down. Answers without substance are more obvious.
Those who are won over by blustering, lies, and cursing (the deplorables) are in his corner solidly already. He makes headway more currently when he refrains from that for a week. His best possible performance would be sounding rational and having a few details of possible plans that a team has created for him memorized enough to repeat a few times and a few memorized attack points.
Not sure he can do that. Even he tried.
But whether he does or does not roughy 45% will say they believe he won and 45% will say they believe Clinton won. And both will likely believe it. The other 10% will probably say both lost. The nature of the beast.
Seriously do you need to wait for the debate to know how, say HurricaneDitka will score it?
FWIW an interesting factoid - while debates rarely have any meaningful impact on elections polls did change meaningfully around the Bush Gore debates. Rare is not never. Polls regarding debate performance scored Gore as the winner 48 to 41% … but 3 days after the debate the polls had moved from Gore solidly ahead to tied. That sigh apparently did him in.