Nah, not forgetting. But while their swinginess may be possible this cycle it is overhyped and moreso their putative swinginess is, for the presidency race, unimportant. Utah? Sure it will be less red but with last two polls of Trump +7 and Trump +13 it aint no swing state. Arizona could be in play but pretty much a national presidential result that has Arizona swinging blue is one in which its swinging blue does not matter for the presidency. IOW in a sizable Clinton win (by say current margin or higher, which means 6ish) Arizona could be a swing, but it is far from being a tipping point state.
Yes, no question that if Clinton wins the popular vote by current margins, meaning 6ish, then the electoral college follows, and a couple of traditionally red states might even flip. May it come to pass.
BUT.
The premise here is that current polling may very well be Trump’s floor and there is no certainty that he stays on the floor. The fact remains that he is doing better than his national numbers in states likely to be tipping points in a closer election, say within 2.
That’s why Wang states that the national Clinton lead is currently a pretty sticky 5 to 7 points but that it would only take a national shift of less than 4 to tie it. Or as Silver states it: “our model suggests that Trump is more likely to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote than the other way around.”
Mind you the experts still are stating that there is no major realignment, or “scrambling”, of the map, but this shift, the reddest becoming somewhat less red but still likely red while the likely tipping points relatively shift slightly redward, is, while not huge, of concern.
IF this is his floor then what is his ceiling? Is it four or more higher? It’s just not a big enough buffer for my anxiety level. As current state polling stands Trump has an advantage in a race that somehow becomes national popular vote close. I hope that will change, I think it will change, but I worry.
UT is not going going for Clinton: no way, no how.
States like AZ, and a number other Romney states where Trump has significantly narrower leads than Romney won by (KS, GA etc) are still going to fluctuate with the national polls. All states correlate this way to a significant degree. Ie. if Trump can win OH, PA and FL, he’s very likely to hold all the Romney states, and thus win. If Clinton wins someplace like AZ, Trump will almost certainly have failed to win those three or perhaps any 2012 Obama state.
Same correlation argument holds for the most part about mathematically possible alternatives for Trump to get to 270 which don’t include all three of FL (Obama by 1), OH (Obama by 2) and PA (Obama by 5, but where Trump’s ‘white working class’ special sauce actually seems to be a factor). Maybe OH, FL, IA, NH, VA (among Obama 2012’s) is plausible w/o PA, all states Bush won in 2000 or 2004, but once you drop FL the list of other wins becomes long… and unlikely if you aren’t going well enough nationally to win FL.
And the picture overall is one where Trump has to pull ahead in several states where he’s behind, Clinton has to hold into fewer where she’s ahead. IOW Trump is behind, though not particularly ‘collapsing’.
Fundamentally, he’s alienated women and minorities. Women are 50% of the population and, of the remainder, minorities make up a healthy percentage.
Unless Trump backs out of his sexist/racist positions and convinces people that they were “taken out of context”, his chance at the throne is effectively zilch, regardless of everything.
A Trump victory is pretty much a worst-case scenario for progressives.
A disastrous Trump presidency is not going to get people to say “We should have elected someone like Bernie”; they will say “we should have elected someone like Hillary”.
Trump, apart from his positions on immigration and terrorism, is sort of a moderate Republican (apart from being batshit crazy). If he gets elected, which God forbid, he will not fail disastrously because of his position on abortion or economic issues. He will fail because he is bat-shit crazy and wrong on immigration and terrorism.
That doesn’t help candidates way further to the left than Trump.
My crystal ball is cloudier than yours. I suspect that’s what you want to be true at an emotional level. And more likely than not Trump will lose IMO, but I don’t think his chance is near zero.
Whereas talking about racist, sexist etc is totally subjective. Trump and people who support him don’t admit any of his statements are that. But he’s trying to fudge, not ‘back out’ necessarily of some of them now (Muslim ban for example). The chance that you and people of like mind would find that sufficient I’d guess are zilch, but Trump’s chance of winning is not IMO.
I can’t stand Trump btw, in case there’s any doubt about that.
I believe it’s exceedingly rare in the real world for either party to benefit from losing a Presidential election. There can be some compensation in terms of ‘proving the other side wrong when their person messes up’ but it’s seldom a full offset to losing 4 yrs of control of the executive and ability to initiate court nominations and set some kind of legislative agenda, even if likely to be faced by an opposition majority in one or both houses of Congress. Not to mention that things muddle along most of the time without direct and immediate reference to who is President, so events don’t usually fully cancelling out the advantage of running as incumbent for a second 4 yrs.
Special pleading might be in order in case of Trump, looking from either party’s perspective. It’s perhaps arguable that the GOP taints itself for a longer time by nominating somebody like Trump if he wins, even assuming he doesn’t cause any big disaster as President. Just a gradual consensus forms that such a low person doesn’t belong in such an office, seeing him there every day, assuming it does not form by this November.
But in general if Hillary blows this lead like she did almost all of a much bigger one over Sanders (not the same situation, but a mighty big lead she blew) and loses, the Democrats could not rationally view that as ‘hooray’. And while the GOP could look at it as glass half full relative to having nominating this person, again could only look at it as bad from the point where they could have nominated a respectable candidate.
Well, in some ways, it already is. $45+ million in debt, little money coming in (getting better though), and in August DJT is going to have to officially eat that $45 mil.
To some extent, but at least a few of the things that Trump has done seem pretty clear-cut and Hillary would be an idiot not to be cutting those cases into a commercial, and putting it into constant rotation.
In which case, he would have a chance. People have a short memory, like to forgive, and are pretty easily swayed by explanations that “it was all taken out of context”.
But, he’s got some work to do to get to that place. Until now, he hasn’t much cared about alienating people. And one certainly can win while alienating some people. But you can’t win if you’ve alienated more than 50% of the voting populace.
Solid analysis. Here’s another take. Carter spoiled the Democratic brand and helped the Republicans. Trump would do the same for the GOP, only more so. Whether the Dems happen to be moderate or progressive is irrelevant: they will be helped regardless. An oddity of a two party system: people can’t necessarily move by increments across the spectrum like they can under proportional representation.
The Dems are more likely to be moderate though, due to the sudden influx of disgruntled independents and former Republicans in their midst. We’ll see some of that next year as a few moderate Dems take over GOP House seats.
Josh Marshall at TPM pointed out that the FEC will release the June fundraising reports on July 20, in the middle of the Republican convention. If Trump has another abysmal fundraising month, it will be an embarrassing distraction at a really bad time. Marshall thinks the campaign is in panic mode, trying to get the fundraising numbers up, which explains the nonsensical moves like soliciting donations from foreign officials and spraying ads all over Facebook.
Not much to disagree with in this. A Trump win would be bad for the country, bad for the GOP, and good for the Democrats (in the longer run). I don’t think that is a good enough reason for Democrats to hope that Trump wins, but I see your point.
A win for Trump is a worst-case scenario for the GOP. Trump isn’t much of a Republican in principle, and is not likely to do much that they agree with. Even if they agree with him on terrorism and immigration, he won’t handle those issues in any reasonable way, and they will have the choice of holding their noses and going along with it, or opposing the President of their own party. We are seeing this now, with the visible distaste of the mainstream Republican establishment for their presumptive nominee.
Best-case scenario at this point is a resounding loss for Trump, while the GOP retains control of Congress. A double-digit Trump loss would at least motivate them to reform their nominating process, so in 2020 they can choose someone who isn’t an outright crackpot, when it was obvious that he was nearly unique among Republicans in that he didn’t stand a chance against someone like Hillary.
I am hoping/expecting that Trump will lose by at least as large a margin as Goldwater did against LBJ. Of course, I didn’t expect The Donald to get thru the first couple of GOP primaries, so take that for what it’s worth.
But thinking about 1964, LBJ won big against Goldwater, but four years later he was essentially hounded out of office, or at least out of running for re-election. I wonder if history will repeat itself with Hillary. Of course, the 1968 winner was hounded out of office much more, and Hillary’s prickly paranoia coupled with a distinct lack of charisma reminds me more of Nixon than LBJ. But Hillary will be (I think) 69 if and when she takes office - I wonder if having the Presidency will be more wearing on her than seeking it.
The Aggregate still shows Clinton Ahead in most polls, with a bit more than 5 points difference with Clinton Ahead.
We should not forget that it is important that there is a horse race. Although this time is looking as if the house (the media) is grumbling that while they are keeping the field prepared for the race Trump is not coming with the fee to play.
You’re missing the point. The point is to find one poll that shows something, extrapolate the hell out of it, and then proclaim there is a “near irreversible” trend. Don’t forget the “near”. That let’s people see the "irreversible’ part, but then you have deniability later.
Honestly, these polls mean almost nothing at this stage. Normal Americans are on vacation and not thinking about politics. The race begins in Sept.
But again that does not mean that polls mean nothing at this point. The polls in aggregate, analyzed by several methods, consistently tell us that there is an (unacceptably high) roughly one in five chance of a trump win based on the information currently available. One poll or two do not change that but a consistent trend over time would impact that analysis. Media tends to overattend to noise as a consistent signal is, well, boring.
