Well without getting too deep in the weeds, the adjustment could be 2 points with rounding effects. I also don’t get the benefits of the adjustment. I have a nagging suspicion that Nate likes complexity for complexity’s sake.
The polls showed a decline for Hillary Clinton going back to August because Hillary Clinton’s campaign had a steady stream of negative news almost as soon as the convention ended. She had more e-mail problems, went fundraising while Louisiana was flooded, and more importantly, Trump actually became a somewhat ‘normal’ candidate – that pulled Trump closer. The deplorables comment and her health problems – which she concealed from the public – brought her down to a near tie. Over the past 7-10 days, however, the negative news cycle has shifted back in Trump’s direction. His history caught up with him and he hasn’t handled it well. Just as I predicted Clinton might fall a few weeks ago, I am now predicting that she will get a little bit of breathing room before the debates. And the most recent data backs me up on this.
Florida is swinging back to Clinton. Not by much, but if she wins by under a thousand votes then that’s a big haul. Trump can win without PA, but he can’t win without Florida.
Latest NBC/WSJ poll nationally has Clinton up by 6 or 7.
Nope. Those are old polls. You need to update.
No, it’s a fair statement outside of the last few days. But if you set the graph in his link to Aug 8-today while you see Trump grinding upwards it doesn’t really show a similar drop in her numbers. I think that indicates, as Richard Parker suggested above, Republicans coming home more than a reversal of preferences. I would put most of this on Trump’s “I’m not a loudmouth prick” offensive he’s been putting on.
That’s my point – a shift that favors Clinton has occurred within the past 7-10 days, which is now being picked up by the most recent polling data. Some of this is due to the birther redux, and some of it is due to Trump’s other problems like his foundation. Hillary will have a bit of fresh momentum going into the debate next Monday – momentum which could be reversed if she performs poorly and he is seen as being the ‘better’ candidate in a surprisingly good debate showing. OTOH, if Hillary slaps him around in the debate, it’s pretty much over and there’s probably nothing that can save him.
Your thesis, asahi, is that the daily news cycles and mini-scandals are moving the polls, and just so happen to be of such timing and magnitude that they resulted in a long slow Trump upward creep for approximately a month. What is the proof of your theory? Why is it a better explanation than the GOP reverting to 90% support for their candidate, as seems to be the case in every modern election regardless of the candidate?
Yes, maybe that is what I am saying. It’s a series of bad press coverage, bad campaign strategy, bad luck, and bad timing by Clinton on one hand, and Trump’s ability to show some discipline and pretend to be a more credible candidate on the other. Has nothing to do with conventional trends - the republicans who support him now always had the free will to do so or not. The evidence in August suggested they would not unless he cleaned up his act – which he did. GOP leaning voters didn’t just fall into line because it’s what they always do. If Donald Trump went to a VA hospital tomorrow and got into some on-camera shouting match with a disabled veteran or some other “No, he didn’t just say that” moment we’ve come to associate with Trump, then a significant number of republicans would probably again decide to forsake him.
Trump had a really good run – until last Friday. Now like most of the mistakes and surprises that crop up during a campaign, the latest series of gaffes and misfortune by itself is not going to finish off Trump. However, when one considers how hard Trump has had to work just to pull nearly even, when we consider that Hillary probably has a little more potential to expand her base than Trump, when we consider her massive, sophisticated organization across multiple states, and when we consider how little time is left, every mistake, every bad news day hurts a little more than it did the day before. Trump could have had these same issues emerge 6 weeks ago in the midst of his tantrum with the Khan family and it might have been buried amid all the chaos and controversy. Instead it’s strung out and comes back to blunt what had been unchecked momentum. Maybe it doesn’t really put Clinton in the lead by much – too early to tell. But even just slowing the momentum and leaving the race even or with Clinton just barely in the lead in multiple states would be an ominous sign for Trump.
But I’m not sure that answers my question, which is: Why do you believe all that? What is it that convinces you that these people are being moved by the minutiae of the campaign and not more conventional forces like partisans returning to the barricades like they always do?
Partisans may be predisposed to vote for their guy but they don’t always do so consistently. There are events which are shaping the race in real time. His poll numbers in August suggested that many of those who were naturally inclined to support Trump were not in the mood to do it then. Things have changed because his campaign recognized that and started going beyond angry uneducated voters. He needed to be more polished to attract the other types of partisans that he simply wasn’t attracting up to that point. He has now attracted a lot of them.
What both candidates need are the softer partisans and somewhat neutral voters, and that is what the rest of this race will be about. Neither candidate will win this race with their partisans alone. It is possible to gain them and also lose them. Voters are starting to make up their minds now and will really do so over the next 2-3 weeks.
But you’ve been making these grand sweeping statements about how we’re going to see grand sweeping changes after almost every news cycle. Forgive me if I have trouble buying your presently subtled down version.
That’s a bunch of things you believe to be true, but no elucidation of what evidence causes you to believe them.
He can win without Florida, but it’s very unlikely. It would require some weirdness where some other states vote more Republican, relative to FL, than they have in recent elections. For example, the states he’s currently ahead in minus FL, but give Trump CO, PA, and NH, or even less likely, CO, WI, and MI.
Personally, I would bet on the Republicans congealing around Trump as the most plausible explanation, as the vultures come home to roost. With the caveat that nothing about this election has made any sense so far, so why should it start now?
There’s no evidence to support the idea that republicans are just supporting their candidate, either. Some candidates garner stronger partisan support than others. Trump has had about 25-35 percent of the population that is going to vote for him no matter what, but you need more than that to win an election. You need people who lean republican but who may not necessarily vote republican in every election. It’s those people who Trump has had a hard time attracting. Mitt Romney was better at it. McCain probably was until he picked Sarah Palin just as the economic crisis unfolded. George W Bush was a hell of a lot better at it.
What’s keeping Trump in the race is that Clinton has pretty much experienced a similar problem. She’s keeping a slightly higher percentage of voters in her camp who will vote for a D or against an R or against the right wing. But she’s having a harder to pulling in the ‘leaners’ the partisan but slightly less partisan.
Are they republicans or are they people who might lean republican? Both parties have lost voters who have become ‘independents’ over the past few election cycles.
I acknowledge it’s difficult to prove my point about news cycles – that’s something that will probably have to wait for a deeper statistical analysis conducted by Nate Silver or some other longitudinal data cruncher.
But I think we can agree that there have been candidates who have been better at pulling in partisans than he has (same is true for Hillary of course). Partisans come in different shades, too. Trump has brought out the crazies – he has those partisans. But he has struggled to bring in your suit-and-tie republican who’s educated, might have some non-white friends, and is appalled by some of the things Trump has said. There’s pretty clear evidence that he has struggled to bring in Republican leaners throughout the race, whether they call themselves republicans or independents or no-party affiliate voters.
In recent weeks, Trump cleaned up his act and looked a little more disciplined in front of the cameras - I think there’s pretty much a consensus about that. He has looked and seemed slightly more presidential. And Hillary Clinton has also pushed some of the right leaning voters away with her comments about deplorables and her health problems that fueled a conspiracy theory.
It could be that conservatives are coming home to roost but they don’t do this because they always do it. These are people with free will and who can decide to vote for Trump, vote for Johnson, vote for Clinton, or sit out of the race entirely.
Sure, he could win without Florida, but it would require basically expanding his map, which is much less likely than just winning a state that in many ways is made to order for Trump but he might be blowing it.
Right but I cautioned people back in August when most of us were writing Trump off that he had erased a 10 point poll deficit before and that there was time to do it again – and I was right about that.
I predicted the comments about the deplorables and her pneumonia cover up would bring Hillary Clinton down in the polls – I was right about that.
I have predicted that Trump’s momentum has stalled – by how much is still hard to say. But I’m right about that, too.
The evidence is the fact that his GOP support has been steadily increasing, explaining all or most of the change. That is consistent with his level of intra-party support returning to modern norms. By contrast, it’s in tension with your explanation involving media cycles.