I don’t donate to candidates because I don’t think it matters, and with Clinton outspending Trump 10-1 it’s clear donating money to her is a waste of time.
I live in Florida, so I may in fact have to vote for Clinton.
You may be right. I hope so. Anecdotally, a few weeks ago I was feeling complacent. This week I gave several hundred dollars to her campaign.
If we’re just hoping for things, why not hope for 60%?
I just checked, and Clinton is in the low-to-mid '40’s in pretty much every [url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/2016_elections_electoral_college_map.html=toss-up state. Her best state (at least that I saw) was PA, where her polling average is 46.8. She only scored higher than 50% in two polls. If she got to 55% in the average of polls in ANY of those states, frankly, it’d be a miraculous swing in the election.
You’re right. As in other elections with significant third party runs, it’s unlikely that either major party candidate could hope to get to 50% in national polls.
It would have made your case more honest to note that Alan Smithee wasn’t talking about national pols, but about 538 polls. Not that what he said makes any sense to me, because if Clinton has a several point lead 538’s predictions will tend toward 100% not 55%, and he talks about individual states as well. Overall, though, there’s no honest way to assume he’s expecting that Clinton will hit 55% in national polls. You’re not even bothering to cherrypick results; you’re outright falsifying them.
I find this view on 538 to be the most helpful. Right now I read it as “Trump would have to win NV and NH, or CO, or significantly beat the odds by winning in PA, WI, MI, VA, or MN to win.”
The individual states only really matter in a race that’s essentially tied. If either candidate has a lead, even a small one, the electoral college will take care of itself. The odds of Trump winning the popular vote by even one point and losing the electoral college are small. His odds of winning the popular vote are 34.8%, his odds of losing the electoral college despite winning the popular vote 1.4%. So I believe that’s a 4% chance that he loses the electoral college if he wins the popular vote.
We keep on tracking these states in the same way we track delegate totals in case there’s a brokered convention, but in the vast majority of elections the national popular vote is decisive. It really isn’t anymore complicated than that.
The national popular vote is never decisive. It’s just that the structure is such that the correlation is very high.
Latest data shows a near 45% for Trump to win the election- according to polls plus. That’s higher than after the GOP convention.
Nowcast are near 50/50.
The polls are always a little behind the news cycle. The data today probably take into account polls that have been released since last Friday through yesterday. I predicted her polls (and hence her chances of winning) would decline before 538’s model showed it - and they did. Likewise, since last Friday, Trump has had his own somewhat negative news cycle, with the worst of the damage possibly inflicted on Friday but not observed in poll data until about three days later. In addition, I think that the latest bombshell about the misappropriation of funds, which may or may not make an impact nationally, probably WILL impact Florida. For that reason, I’m slightly more bullish on Clinton now, on Sept 20, than I was this time last week.
Again, this is when people are really paying attention now, so every missteps matters a lot more than it did in July and August. Over the past weeks, both candidates have stepped in it. Clinton probably stepped in a bigger, smellier pile with her comments about the deplorables and her inadvertent confirmation of a conspiracy theory, but Trump has now fumbled the football himself it would seem. Of particular note is the fact that Trump actually - if anyone can believe it - was actually starting to win some African American voters over with his charm offensive, and that trend probably continued until late last week. However, I suspect he has probably back slid a bit in the days since.
What makes you think the trend ended last week? Just supposition about the latest news cycle?
He did just say, today, that “the African American community is in the worst shape it’s ever been. Ever, ever, ever.”
Worse than 1840? Worse than 1940? What an ass.
Very interesting article today by The Upshot which illustrates how big of a deal defining the LV screens is.
Same raw data from their recent Florida poll analyzed by four good pollsters results in anything from Trump +1 to Clinton +4 depending on what choices were made to adjust the demographics and moreso depending on what sort of LV screen was applied.
Interesting. I knew there was a lot of decision making to crunch the raw numbers but it’s neat to see how big a difference it makes even amongst good pollsters. Reminds me how laughable it was when those two engineers from Alberta did a poll and on their site proclaimed “anyone can do a poll, all you need is to know the methodology”.
Oh, thanks for the Polyvote thread you did to.
Yep, and I stand by that supposition – mainly because the news cycle is a pretty good indicator of how the polls are about to move and, moreover, some recent polling data indicates that Clinton’s rapid descent has probably leveled off some.
She’s still in treacherous territory of course - a bad debate performance would possibly allow Trump to pull ahead. And pulling ‘even’ is basically a +1 for Trump who probably has more committed voters.
So you think Hillary’s massive data and ground game advantage is swept away and even surpassed by the assumed enthusiasm of Trump supporters? No I have a feeling it’s Clinton that’ll beat her polling numbers.
Just looking at the RCP average chart, Trump has been gaining on Clinton ever since August 8th. I don’t see anything “rapid” about it. It’s been a long, slow slog from HRC ~+8 then, to HRC ~+1 today. In fact, looking at the line for the last month and a half, the phrase that comes to mind is “steady progress” for Trump.
I think that’s the right analysis. Trump has made steady progress since mid-August, for reasons that have little to do with the new cycle du jour (including the claims of a big Trump bump from pneumonia-gate) . Indeed, if you wind the clock back to June, you see Clinton basically holding steady, maybe losing half-a-point, and Trump gaining 4 points or so. Mainly, it’s partisan Republicans coming back into the fold, as Trump’s GOP support has gone from mid-seventies to high-eighties.
The question, as always, is what happens next. Right now, Trump is right around his historical high tide in the head-to-head with Clinton. If he keeps increasing until the debate, that will be a sign that he really has won some converts. If not, then 41-42 starts to look like a ceiling for him, at least until the undecideds start to come home (and they’re likely to split basically 50-50, as usual).
I suspect we won’t have a clear answer to this question before the first debate fucks it all up.
Just one (more) poll, but Monmouth has Hillary +8 in NH. Add that to the recent +5 in FL, and I’m hopeful that it’s a sign that whatever bounce Trump might have gotten from Hillary’s health is fading.
If you’re referring to the poll by “St. Leo University” I’d be pretty skeptical.
At this point I am not sure there’s much to say until Debate 1 happens. Poll shifting between now and then will be just static by comparison to what that debate could do.