Polling numbers and predictions

[Econoline]

Well, in defense of the 1968/1972 RNC (<- I can't believe I just wrote that) they didn't actuaily know he was a criminal before they nominated him...

[RayThom]

... Yes, privileged white males over 50, please please tell us how it is... We silly females don't really have a clue....

Well, little lady, let me try to put this into simple terms you can understand...

Nah, on second thought I'll let you figure it out on your own. Experience is your best teacher. Good luck.

[Gob]

... Yes, privileged white males over 50, please please tell us how it is... We silly females don't really have a clue....

Certainly!

[Lord Jim]

I'll direct Lady Kelly to that video, I'm sure she'll be most appreciative...

[Lord Jim]

It would be so nice to go back to the days of brandy and cigars and celebrating The Old Queen....

[Lord Jim]

The "canary in the coal mine" here for the party should be that recent New Hampshire poll that Guin referenced that had Trump losing by 17 points and Ayotte down by 10...

That may be an outlier, (no other New Hampshire poll has had Trump down by so much, and every other poll has had Ayotte either within the margin of error or ahead) but nevertheless it's instructive...

It shows what will happen down ballot if Trump goes down by a massive vote turnout landslide...

If you had a hypothetical GOP Presidential nominee who only lost New Hampshire by five points, Ayotte would be able to withstand that, and win by two...

But if you have a nominee who loses by double digits in places that should be closer, and single digits where the party should win, (like Georgia) it's a whole new ball game down ballot...

And that's a scenario that will play itself out over and over again across the country in down ballot elections...

In states and Congressional districts...

All the more reason to get rid of this sonuvabitch...

While as I have made very clear I believe that preventing Trump from becoming President is Priority #1, I also believe it's very important that the GOP retain sufficient strength in the House and the Senate to serve as a check on the kind of over reach that defined the first two years of the Obama Presidency...

That won't happen if we have a nominee at the top of the ticket who loses a close purple swing state like New Hampshire by 17 points...

[Guinevere]

+15, not 17. You definitely have to take into account the other candidates in NH.

RCP has moved NH and PA (and MI) from toss up to leans Clinton (+6.8) after the polls Sue and I posted about. I think NH should be darker blue. That latest poll puts HRC about where she was polling in NH all year. It may be a purple state, but it's blue purple. Don't let Jarl fool you -- there are way more people like me (and AndyH) in NH than there are like him (thank god).

[wesw]

raythom and oldr win the thread.

wild variations, wild swings and inaccuracy in the primaries are all indications that the polls are not to be relied on this year. (brexit too!)

not to mention the obvious manipulation of many polls .

it all depends on who ya ask, no?

[RayThom]

As guin mentioned, here's the latest on the way my state is rolling.
Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Clinton:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... -5633.html

[Lord Jim]

Poll finds Clinton has widened lead ahead of Trump to 8 points



Hillary Clinton has emerged from the two major party conventions and their aftermath with an eight-point lead over Donald Trump, aided by a consolidation of support among Democrats and a failure so far by Republicans to rally equally behind their nominee, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Clinton and her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.), now lead Trump and his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence (Ind.), by 50 percent to 42 percent among registered voters, double the four-point advantage the Democrats held on the eve of the Republican convention in mid-July. Among likely voters, the Democratic nominee leads by 51 percent to 44 percent.

In a four-way race that includes Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Clinton leads Trump by 45 percent to 37 percent, with Johnson at 8 percent and Stein at 4 percent. Before the Republican convention, she had a four-percentage-point lead in a four-way matchup.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html


ETA:

Oh gee, I missed this bit of brain dead BS:

She certainly lies better than Nixon...

And has not committed a crime. Multiple crimes in Nixons case. Nor has she made racist and antisemitic comments, nor has she had an "enemies list" which she used to pervert the institutions of government to punish her opponents &c.


Really bad choice for a comparison.

The email 'scandal' was nothing. Misstatements about nothing are still nothing.


yrs,
rubato

When I saw Econo's post at the top of this page, I immediately thought "That must be a response to something stunningly stupid and/or ignorant from the rodeo clown...He's the only one here addled brained and ignorant enough to not know what Econo was saying before he said it."

And so I checked, and it turns out I was wrong...

It wasn't something stunningly stupid and/or ignorant...

It was multiple somethings stunningly stupid and/or ignorant...

When it comes to cramming a maximum quantity of shit-for-brains crapola into a minimal quantity of words, rube employs a truly impressive efficiency of language....

And once again, he demonstrates his steely resistance to learning anything and his complete inability to read for comprehension...

It's as though when he was writng that post, after he got through displaying his ignorance or dishonesty about what was publicly known about Nixon and when it was known, he thought to himself:

"You, know I don't think this post is quite stupid enough. I think I'll throw in my idiotic misunderstanding of the Hillary email thing for good measure."

It's just not possible to keep up with every bit of trash-brained nonsense this garbanzo posts; it would be a full time job...

So much dumbfuckery; so little time...

[oldr_n_wsr]

To clarify, the "it's their time" is not about Hillary specifically, but about having a female President.

And I say again, having a vagina or a penis is NOT a criteria when I cast my vote, be it for president, governor, county exec. or dog catcher.
Nor is "Because it's their time". That smacks of a sense of entitlement.

Yes, privileged white males over 50, please please tell us how it is.... We silly females don't really have a clue....

I don't recall any of us "privileged white males over 50" telling you (or any other female) "how it is" (well maybe wesw ). I expressed my view that I do not take into account the sex of a candidate when voting for them. You may or may not agree with that opinion.

Now if only a eunic were running, they would get my vote.

[Econoline]

From the WaPo:



(See the rest of the poll here.)

[Lord Jim]

Clinton widens lead in polls of key states

Hillary Clinton has widened her lead over Donald Trump in Wisconsin, a virtual must-win state for the Republican, and now outpaces him by 15 points among likely voters, the state's leading poll has found.

The numbers from the latest Marquette Law School poll in Wisconsin are the latest in a series of surveys that show Clinton with strong leads in states that will be crucial for the November election. Clinton leads Trump 52%-37% among likely voters, the survey found; that's up from a 4-point lead, 45%-41% last month.

Trump's strategists have argued that he can win the election by appealing to working-class white voters in industrial states from Pennsylvania through Ohio and Michigan to Wisconsin. So far, however, the latest polls show him trailing in each of those states, often by large margins.

In Pennsylvania, four polls taken since the end of the Democratic convention show Clinton ahead by between 10 and 11 points. Those include surveys by Marist College for NBC and the Wall St. Journal, Quinnipiac University, Franklin & Marshall College as well as a poll done by one of the ABC news stations in the state.

In Ohio, which typically is several points more Republican than Pennsylvania, the race appears closer, with the most recent polls by Marist and Quinnipiac showing Clinton ahead by 5 and 4 points, respectively.

The race in Michigan appears similar to Pennsylvania, according to two recent polls for the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.

Clinton's margins stay roughly the same whether the polls ask voters to consider a head-to-head matchup with Trump or a four-way contest with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. The two smaller-party candidates pull a few points from both Clinton and Trump, but don't appear to be significantly affecting the race in any of the four big industrial battleground states.

In Wisconsin, for example, the four-way matchup among likely voters found Clinton at 47%, Trump 34%, Johnson 9% and Stein 3%, the Marquette poll found.

The survey also found that voter impressions of Clinton had grown more favorable since July while those of Trump had remained steady -- and highly negative. Among registered voters, just 27% had a favorable view of Trump and 65% viewed him unfavorably.

For Clinton, 43% of registered voters had a favorable view and 53% were unfavorable. Last month, the comparable figures were 36% to 58%.

More than seven in 10 voters said they did not know enough about Johnson to have a view one way or the other. Almost eight in 10 responded that way about Stein.

Clinton gets support from 90% of her fellow Democrats in Wisconsin, the survey found. By contrast, Trump gets support from 79% of Republicans.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/ ... story.html

[rubato]

Like I said. The least uncertain presidential election in my lifetime. Still months away.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Well, in defense of the 1968/1972 RNC (<- I can't believe I just wrote that) they didn't actuaily know he was a criminal before they nominated him...

In defense of the electorate at that time very many people assessed his character correctly and voted against him. In '68 it was a very near thing. In '72 the technique of Republilying, dirty tricks, and break-ins had been improved considerably. The GOP has been a crappy judge of character ever since Eisenhower.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

A long but interesting article...

(Note to rube: You might as well skip this post. It's got way too much math for you to be able to follow it; it will just give you a headache.)

What A Clinton Landslide Would Look Like

We’re going to spend a lot of time over the next 87 days contemplating the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency. Trump is a significant underdog — he has a 13 percent chance of winning the election according to our polls-only model and a 23 percent chance according to polls-plus. But those probabilities aren’t that small. For comparison, you have a 17 percent chance of losing a “game” of Russian roulette.

But there’s another possibility staring us right in the face: A potential Hillary Clinton landslide. Our polls-only model projects Clinton to win the election by 7.7 percentage points, about the same margin by which Barack Obama beat John McCain in 2008. And it assigns a 35 percent chance to Clinton winning by double digits.

Our other model, polls-plus, is much more conservative about Clinton’s prospects. If this were an ordinary election, the smart money would be on the race tightening down the stretch run, and coming more into line with economic “fundamentals” that suggest the election ought to be close. Since this is how the polls-plus model “thinks,” it projects Clinton to win by around 4 points, about the margin by which Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012 — a solid victory but a long way from a landslide.

But the theory behind “fundamentals” models is that economic conditions prevail because most other factors are fought to a draw. In a normal presidential election, both candidates raise essentially unlimited money and staff their campaigns with hundreds of experienced professionals. In a normal presidential election, both candidates are good representatives of their party’s traditional values and therefore unite almost all their party’s voters behind them. In a normal presidential election, both candidates have years of experience running for office and deftly pivot away from controversies to exploit their opponents’ weaknesses. In a normal presidential election, both candidates target a broad enough range of demographic groups to have a viable chance of reaching 51 percent of the vote. This may not be a normal presidential election because while most of those things are true for Clinton, it’s not clear that any of them apply to Trump.

A related theory is that contemporary presidential elections are bound to be relatively close because both parties have high floors on their support. Indeed, we’ve gone seven straight elections without a double-digit popular vote victory (the last one was Ronald Reagan’s in 1984), the longest such streak since 1876-1900.



As with other theories of this kind, however, there’s the risk of mistaking what’s happened in the recent past for some sort of iron law of politics. Historically, the U.S. has ebbed and flowed between periods of close presidential elections — such in the late 19th century or early 21st century — and eras in which there were plenty of lopsided ones (every election in the 1920s and 1930s was a blowout).

These patterns seem to have some relationship with partisanship, with highly partisan epochs tending to produce close elections by guaranteeing each party its fair share of support. Trump’s nomination, however, reflects profound disarray within the Republican Party. Furthermore, about 30 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning voters have an unfavorable view of Trump. How many of them will vote for Clinton is hard to say, but parties facing this much internal strife, such as Republicans in 1964 or Democrats in 1972 or 1980, have often suffered landslide losses.

Perhaps the strongest evidence for a potential landslide against Trump is in the state-by-state polling, which has shown him underperforming in any number of traditionally Republican states. It’s not just Georgia and Arizona, where polls have shown a fairly close race all year. At various points, polls have shown Clinton drawing within a few percentage points of Trump — and occasionally even leading him — in states such as Utah, South Carolina, Texas, Alaska, Kansas and even Mississippi.

Just how bad could it get? Let’s start by giving Clinton the 332 electoral votes that Obama won in 2012. That’s obviously not a safe assumption: The race could shift back toward Trump, and even if it doesn’t, Clinton could lose states such as Iowa or Nevada, where her polling has been middling even after her convention bounce. But as I said, we’re going to focus on Clinton’s upside case today.

So I’m going to list the states Romney won in order of how easy it is for Clinton to flip them, according to our polls-only model.1 The number in parentheses by each state represents the point at which the model estimates it would flip to Clinton, based on her lead in the national popular vote. For instance, South Carolina (+9.5) means that Clinton would be favored in South Carolina if she leads by at least 9.5 percentage points nationally, but not by less than that. These projections are based on where the model has each state projected currently, along with each state’s elasticity score, a measure of how responsive it is to changes in the national environment. Here goes:

North Carolina (+3.2): It wouldn’t be any surprise if Clinton carried North Carolina, which Obama narrowly won in 2008. But Obama lost North Carolina in 2012 despite winning by about 4 percentage points nationally. This year, it looks like Clinton would win North Carolina with a 3 percentage point national victory. In other words, North Carolina has drifted slightly bluer relative to the rest of the country and is closer to being a true tipping-point state this year.

Arizona (+7.1): Arizona and Georgia have been flickering between light blue and light red in our polls-only projection recently. That’s because the model figures each state would be a tossup with Clinton ahead by about 7 points nationally, and that’s where the forecast has been for the past few days. Arizona is the fourth-most-Hispanic state after New Mexico, Texas and California, although historically its Hispanic population has voted at relatively low rates. A strong Hispanic turnout, perhaps coupled with gains for Clinton among Mormon voters (about 6 percent of Arizona’s electorate), might swing the state to her.

Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District (+7.1): Nebraska and Maine award one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. That came in handy for Obama in 2008, when he won Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional district, which consists of Omaha and most of its suburbs. District boundaries were redrawn after the 2010 Census to make them slightly tougher for Democrats, but Omaha’s highly-educated demographics — we estimate that 47 percent of voters in the district have a college degree, comparable to Virginia or Connecticut — could wind up being favorable to Clinton. There’s been no polling in the district yet, so its position on this list is based on the model’s guesses based on its demographics and voting history.

Georgia (+7.2): In some ways, Georgia might be more promising than Arizona for Democrats’ long-term future. It has more electoral votes — 16 to Arizona’s 11 — and could serve as part of a bloc of states (along with Virginia and North Carolina) that could eventually offset losses for Democrats in the Rust Belt. It’s easy enough to see how Georgia’s demographics are favorable for Clinton: It has a substantial black population, but also an increasingly well-educated white population, with lots of migration from the Midwest and the Northeast.

Let’s pause here to see what the map would look like if Clinton wins by 8 percentage points nationally — close to where her lead in the polls has been over the past week or so. This map you see below is worth 375 electoral votes, close to the 365 electoral votes Obama won in 2008 when he beat McCain by 7.3 percentage points. In fact, the map is identical to 2008 but for three changes: Georgia and Arizona turn blue, while Indiana (which surprisingly went for Obama in 2008) remains red:



But let’s say Clinton continues to build her lead, instead of Trump rebounding. Which dominoes might fall next?

South Carolina (+9.5): Public Policy Polling caused a big stir on Thursday when it published a poll showing Clinton down just 2 percentage points in South Carolina — but the result shouldn’t have been all that shocking. South Carolina was only a couple of points redder than Georgia in 2012 and 2008, so if Georgia has moved to being a tie, you’d expect South Carolina to follow just a half-step behind it. True, South Carolina doesn’t have a metropolis like Atlanta, but a relatively high percentage of white voters there have college degrees.

Missouri (+10.3): It’s surprising to see Missouri, once considered a bellwether state, so far down this list. Bill Clinton won it twice, and Obama came within 4,000 votes of winning it in 2008. But now we estimate that Hillary Clinton would need to win by about 10 points nationally to claim the state. Note, however, that the recent polling in Missouri has been mixed, with polls showing everything from a 10-point lead for Trump to a slight edge for Clinton.

There’s something of a gap after South Carolina and Missouri before the next set of states. Thus, Trump might be able to hold Clinton below 400 electoral votes even if she won by 12 points nationally:



But after that, the floodgates would really open, with lots of traditionally red states in all parts of the country potentially turning toward Clinton:

Mississippi (+12.3): I’m skeptical about this one, since Mississippi presents something of a modelling challenge. You can see why it’s an attractive target for Democrats, in theory: It has the highest share of black voters in the country (after the District of Columbia). But in 2008, only 11 percent of Mississippi’s white population voted for Obama. Clinton trailed Trump by just 3 percentage points in the only poll of Mississippi, taken in March. In that poll, Clinton got 20 percent of the white vote. If she can replicate that on Election Day, the outcome could be close.

Indiana (+13.2): Obama’s win in Indiana in 2008 — one of just two times Democrats have won the state since 1940 — might be hard to duplicate. He benefited that year from investing in the ground game in a state that is usually ignored, and from Indiana’s connections with Chicago. Plus, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is Trump’s running mate. Still, if Clinton stretches her national lead into the teens, Indiana could be competitive.

Texas (+13.8): Democrats have long talked about turning Texas blue — or at least purple — but the truth is they haven’t come anywhere close. Obama lost Texas by 12 points in 2008 despite his near-landslide margin nationally, for instance. But Clinton has a number of factors that could work in her favor. We estimate that about somewhere between 37 and 40 percent of Texas’s electorate will be Hispanic, black, Asian-American or Native American, depending on turnout. A high proportion of its white population has college degrees. And Trump has run afoul of locally popular politicians, such as Ted Cruz and George W. Bush. Previous polls of Texas had shown Trump with only a mid-single digit lead there, although a more recent survey had him up by 11.

Montana (+14.1): Obama also nearly won Montana in 2008, losing by just 2 percentage points. But Montana is historically an anti-establishment state, and Trump led Clinton in the only poll we can find — which, granted, was way back in November 2015 — by 21 percentage points. A winning scenario for Clinton would probably involve Libertarian Gary Johnson getting a substantial portion of the vote: Montana was Johnson’s second-best state, after New Mexico, in 2012.

Utah (+14.2): People are fascinated by Clinton’s prospects of winning in Utah, which went for Romney by 48 points in 2012. But it’s hard to say just how realistic those are. The polls-only model has Clinton just a couple of percentage points behind in the polling average in Utah, but its demographic model projects her to lose it by 16 points — a lot better than 2012, but not particularly close. As with Mississippi, therefore, the odds you assign to Clinton in Utah are highly sensitive to your choice of assumptions. She’s taking her chances seriously enough to make some efforts to campaign there, but is it a wild goose chase — like when Dick Cheney visited Hawaii in 2004 — or part of long-term plan to swing Mormons into the Democratic Party?

South Dakota (+14.9): Less excitingly, Clinton could win South Dakota in the event of a national rout, as the state seems to have become the slightly bluer of the two Dakotas after North Dakota’s oil boom. Perhaps South Dakota has a soft spot for Clinton, having voted for her in the Democratic primary in both 2008 and 2016, when Obama and Bernie Sanders won almost all the surrounding states.

Kansas (+15.6): Polls have had Kansas surprisingly close — with one survey in June even having Clinton ahead. One can squint and make an argument for it: Kansas is relatively well-educated, and Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is extremely unpopular. But note that Kansas polls badly overstated Republicans’ problems in 2014, when both Brownback and Sen. Pat Roberts won re-election.

Alaska (+15.7): I doubt that Alaskans have much affection for Clinton, but the state is idiosyncratic enough that I don’t really know what they think of Trump, who lost to Cruz in the state’s Republican caucuses. As in Montana, a Clinton win would probably depend on Johnson sucking up a lot of Trump’s vote. Clinton trailed by just 5 percentage points in the only poll of Alaska in January, which didn’t include Johnson as an option.

Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District (+15.8): As goes Omaha, so goes Lincoln? Here’s what the map might look like if Clinton won by 16 percentage points nationally, along with all the states we’ve mentioned so far:



That would work out to 471 electoral votes, to 67 for Trump, which would be fairly typical for a win of that magnitude. Dwight D. Eisenhower won 457 electoral votes when beating Adlai Stevenson by 15 points in 1956, for example. And Franklin D. Roosevelt won 472 electoral votes in 1932, in an 18-point win against Herbert Hoover. Clinton would be a ways short of Ronald Reagan’s 525 electoral votes in 1984, however.

All right, let’s stop there. I’m trying to encourage you to keep an open mind. The way the polls-only model thinks about things, Clinton is ahead by 7 or 8 percentage points now, and the error in the forecast is symmetrical, meaning that she’s as likely to win by 14 or 16 points as she is to lose the popular vote to Trump. There have even been a couple of national polls that showed Clinton with a lead in the mid-teens. But my powers of imagination are limited. Other than losing North Dakota to go along with South Dakota, or perhaps the statewide electoral votes in Nebraska to go along with the congressional district ones, it’s hard for me to envision Trump doing any worse than this — unless he really does shoot someone on 5th Avenue.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wha ... look-like/

[Econoline]

I believe I've posted this somewhere here before, but I can't find where:

FiveThirtyEight projection of what the Electoral College
would look like if women refuse to vote for Trump.

[Lord Jim]

Real Clear Politics has a neat feature where you can construct your own electoral map:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... t_map.html

I did one where I gave Hillary any state where she leads or trails by 5 points or less, (which includes some very unusual states for a Democratic Presidential candidate to carry, like Kansas and Utah) and came up with a 394-141 split...

Just eliminating the toss ups and giving her every state where she currently leads gives her a 362-176 lead...

There are some others that could flip that could make the margin much larger...

In Texas for example, there hasn't been a poll done since June and in that one Trump only had an eight point lead...

Given the overall direction of the race since then, it's logical to assume that his margin there is even narrower now...

If the race continues as it has been, she has a real shot at breaking the 400 vote electoral landslide threshold...

[RayThom]

by Lord Jim » Sat Aug 13, 2016 6:39 am
A long but interesting article...

>>To PARAPHRASE<<(Note to 'RayThom': You might as well skip this post. It's got way too 'many words' for you to be able to follow it; it will just give you a headache.)

I'm waiting for the evening of November 8th to crystallize all these number and statistics that I can't find room for in my head at the moment. However, the colors in your presentation are very pretty.

[Bicycle Bill]

I find it interesting that in all three scenarios LJ has put forward, Trump doesn't even carry his home state in any of them — and Pence even fails to deliver Indiana in the third one.

-"BB"-