This site says close to 10% of voters remain undecided. They can easily swing the election.
In addition to the “undecided” vote There’s also still a huge number of people (relatively speaking) voting for Gary Johnson. In all likelihood that will evaporate; God bless the man, running his campaign with dogged determination, but his final tally is going to be a hell of a lot closer to the 1% he got in 2012 than it is to 8%. People angrily choosing him in polls because of the mediocrity of the Clinton-Trump choice will, when push comes to shove, usually make a vote that might matter, especially in swing states.
Nate Silver currently has Trump’s odds up to about 40%.
Incredible.
[I’m skeptical of that number, but still: incredible.)
Trump will think he doesn’t need debate coaches; he’ll prob just try to do what he did to his opponents: use nicknames, childish insults, etc. But Hillary has a thick skin and doesn’t have to hold back for party unity like Trump’s opponents did until it was too late.
There is no reason to be skeptical. It’s math.
People want to vote for Donald Trump. Not all of them look like Duck Dynasty cast members. The Clinton campaign is doing nothing to convince them otherwise, and near as I can tell nothing to convince undecided voters, either.
Trump may do OK in the debates but I think he has three things going against him.
First of all he has little experience with two-person debates and the format will strain his limited attention span and intellectual stamina. I suspect he will flag towards the end.
Secondly the debates will probably have fair amount of policy substance and Trump will likely make errors which will dog him much like his NATO comments have over the last few days.
Third, much of the impact of a debate happens through the later media commentary and Trump will be handicapped by the fact that many prominent conservative commentators dislike him.
Ultimately I think Trump works best in small doses. I don’t think his convention speech was very effective; his style of red-faced bellowing didn’t wear well in a speech that went well over an hour. He will have a similar problem in a one-on-one debate.
Our culture has an unkind social bias against women in one particular respect: A woman who interrupts a man is less well regarded than a man who interrupts a woman. You can probably see this for yourself in everyday life. Men interrupt women more often.
This will make Trump’s inevitable interruptions of Clinton less harmful to his image than any of her interruptions of him.
Will we have a debate moderator who will have the ability to say, “Donald, that’s the sixth time you’ve broken the debate rules, the rules you, yourself, signed and agreed to.”
(And…even if the moderator does that, Trump’s true-believers will just take it as a sign of moderator bias. The guy “wins” no matter how badly he behaves!)
Like what? What do you think would be required to convince someone who sees Trump and Hillary as pretty much even? Why do you think Trump himself won’t provide the needed motivation over the next several months?
Hey, that gives me an idea! I think I’ll start a thread about what a Clinton vs. Trump debate might be like! 
This is nothing more than the usual post-convention bump. It means noting at all until after the Democrats get done with their convention-compare numbers then.
I think it’s unlikely either of them will gain a big advantage. Trump may have more to gain though in the sense that his high negatives are mainly of function of people thinking he’s a clown, bully etc not fit for the office. Aside from whether that’s ‘true’, it’s something he can make progress against by looking relatively reasonable and presidential. Hillary’s almost as high negatives are not things as easy to make progress against in a debate.
And it’s not just going to be moderators and Clinton beating up Trump on policy or Trump ‘telling lies’. It will also be him attacking her on things her hardcore supporters might dismiss, but a lot of persuadable voters won’t (emails, personal fortune gained by influence peddling, pretty marginal record as Secy of State, what she’s really running for, the contradiction of ‘Obama’s been so great, but now I have to fix the economy’, etc).
These things have a central tendency to being ties, because even if the protagonists show their strengths, those were already known and factored into expectations. And neither of them have shown themselves particularly quick on their feet in debates. They’ll mainly unleash their canned talking points against one another, same as they do in solo speeches, interviews and commercials.
Remember even Sarah Palin managed to sound like she had half a brain in her debate with Biden. The trick was to ignore the substance of the questions, and to pivot to one of her Chatty Cathy talking points. Many people thought she was great.
Before the convention Trump’s chances were about 36 percent. They hit 40 before the convention was over. He’s been catching up for weeks. No, it’s not just a convention bump. It’s time to accept he has a real chance and a serious campaign has to be run to stop him.
I don’t think it’s a post-convention bump. The convention ended less than 24 hours ago. Polls take longer than that.
And what exactly makes you think it isn’t, or that Clinton isn’t taking Trump seriously? Because she isn’t burying him by double digits in July? Or because she’s not doing things that you think she should do?
Is there any way to get a metric on how many Americans, ostensibly part of the electorate, aren’t even thinking about this very much? After all, a decision need not be made until November.
To my inner ear, the word “undecided” implies thinking, stroking your chin and pondering. But maybe not, maybe they just don’t care yet. Dunno, but I’d like to. Clues?
Something I’ve been wondering for a while: odds on Trump saying something during one of the debates that makes the audience gasp as one? I can easily imagine it happening, yet I know it’s kind of unlikely.
If on the real Trump it is a brain slug, it would explain a lot.
OF the many, many things I’ve heard about The Evil Hillary, Lack of Seriousness is not one of them.
Trump’s own actions have done nothing but advance his chances of winning the election. I think it’s well past time to give up the assumption he’s going to self-destruct. His support has grown relentlessly.
[QUOTE=Leaper]
Because she isn’t burying him by double digits in July?
[/QUOTE]
That’s one of the main reasons, yes.
Trump is the worst Presidential hopeful (not counting fringe candidates) in the history of the United States of America, and it’s not a close call. He makes George W. Bush look like Nelson Mandela. Who’s the worst Presidential candidate for a major party ever who got the nomination for a major party? Goldwater? Aaron Burr? Wendell Wilkie? Trump is worse, and not, like, “he’s a few points on the Candidate Scale behind Breckinridge.” I mean, if you made a list, there’d be 150 pages of spaces between the second worst candidate and Donald Trump’s name.
Trump is clearly, obviously, a wannabe dictator, a sociopathic narcissist who has been in the public eye for over three decades and has behaved in a despicable fashion with a relentless enthusiasm the entire time. This isn’t a person I disagree with politically; this is a person who is honest-to-God evil, and it’s obvious that he is. He’s unapologetic about it. It’s like if Syndrome from “The Incredibles” were running for President except Syndrome was a better businessman. I cannot think of anything good to say about Donald Trump.
The fact that this race is close is a damning indictment of someone, and I’d much rather blame Hillary Clinton than I would basically the entire United States of America, whose citizenry are - like most everyone - fundamentally kind and decent people. A good candidate should be absolutely annihilating Trump. The race should look like 1964 or 1984 where people know it’s going to be a massacre.