Here’s a dose of perspective for people freaking out about Comey’s letter’s impact on the race.
All National polls in the field 10/29 to present (compared w/ change from pre-Comey poll):
YouGov C+3 (C-1)
Times-Picayune +3 (C+1)
Rasmussen +0 (0)
Morning Consult +3 (O)
So far, at least, there is no evidence in the national polls that the Comey letter changed anything.
Clinton’s dive may have finally hit the bottom in Florida. Too early to tell yet but CNN puts her in the lead. Whether she’s in the lead or not is hard to tell but this is somewhat reminiscent of what happened after her awful September stretch - IIRC Florida was one of the first states in which Clinton’s falling poll numbers began to stabilize and recover, just before she had her winning streak beginning with the first debate. That may be playing out here again now.
Let’s hope there’s not another Friday scandal drop.
New Quinnipiac polls:
FLORIDA: Clinton 46 – Trump 45, Johnson 2
NORTH CAROLINA: Clinton 47 – Trump 44, Johnson 3
OHIO: Trump 46 – Clinton 41, Johnson 5
PENNSYLVANIA: Clinton 48 – Trump 43, Johnson 3
That’ll have HRC smiling. When was the poll in the field?
Not sure yet, but it was just released, so presumably the last few days.
EDIT: October 27 - November 1
That Quinnipiac poll for NC asked respondents if they voted already – early voters back Clinton 58-36… very big margin. The Upshot’s estimate for NC, based on early voting registration numbers and their own polling, estimates early voters to HRC 53-43, with a total estimated result of HRC winning NC by +7.
All of those numbers look very, very good for HRC. If NC is called for HRC shortly after polls close, then we’ll probably know that Hillary has won the election quite early.
If that’s true, Clinton will win, of course; it is very difficult to construct a plausible map where Trump wins while losing North Carolina. Not impossible; he could flip Pennsylvania, but that seems kinda unlikely in a universe where he won North Carolina by seven points.
Having said that I am extremely, extremely dubious of Clinton carrying North Carolina by seven points. That is totally inconsistent with the polls, on every possible level. Clinton has probably NEVER been that far ahead and it would be bizarre to think she’s that far ahead now.
The problem with drawing conclusions based on early voting is that early voters are a self-selecting group and are not representative of the state as a whole. Granted, this is a huge chunk of the voters - probably half the state, at least, will have voted before Election Day - but exit polls can be chancy.
Supposedly the campaign’s data whiz kids are able to target low propensity voters for early voting. If that’s actually true then they may allow the campaign to beat polls though of course seven points is still implausible.
Anyway NC is really important and polling has been all over the place so it’s nice to see a high quality poll with a moderate Hillary lead. A high quality CO poll would be nice now. The Times Picayune/Lucid poll has Hillary up by 7 but it doesn’t have a 538 grade.
Even if early voters aren’t representative of the population as a whole, they’re still the very epitome of both likely voters and rigid voters, so a lead there definitely has meaning. And Clinton has not just a lead, but a very strong lead. Those are voters who can no longer be dissuaded from voting by any scandal, nor persuaded to vote for Trump instead.
If I were running Trump’s campaign the strategy would focus mostly on how to get over the firewall while trying not to fall behind in the toss-up / pinkish states of Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio. He can’t waste time with Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Michigan and I don’t really get the strategy. Realistically, he can climb the firewall by winning in New Hampshire and Nevada, or by taking Pennsylvania - assuming of course that he can wrest away FL, OH, and NC.
So you’re saying he should try to win states where he has the best chance? What a novel strategy. I bet someone on the Trump campaign is reading this now and completely remaking their plans.
I see no silver lining to a Trump victory. On another angle, there are several Hillary hating youtubers that I want to see explode with rage after the over the top whining they have been doing against her. Thinking Sargon of Akkad, who I agree with on many issues, but on Hillary he thinks she’s worse than Trump and as such has been doing hitvid after hitvid.
Some further signs of a Clinton rebound in Florida: 50% of the early votes in three crucial SE counties so far have been cast by registered Democrats. Also looks like African-American turnout is on the upswing.
New York Times are taking a more pessimistic view that African American turnout is lower than previously…
Is anyone aggregating the aggregators yet?
Sure, but we need some special sauce! We need to give each of the aggregators a rating and a house effect to compute the actual aggregated aggregation!
DSeid turned me on to this place:
They aggregate polls, experts’ opinion, betting sites, citizen forecasts and econometric models.
On 538 in the fresh updates page, there are the latest Ipsos polls, Clinton was +3 ahead of Trump on the poll covering Oct. 24-28, in the following polls Clinton has gone to +6, +8, +7 and +7 in the last one that goes to today.