We are below 50 days left to go. 49 days exactly today, as its the 7 week mark. Seven weeks left to election day.
Polling average: Hillary ahead by 1.1% (was 2.2% last week and 3.4% two weeks ago) in RCP average (4-way polls). If you want the good news for Trump? He is picking up one point nationally per week now for two weeks, if this were to hold, Trump could be up by 6% by election day. If you want the good news for Hillary, the polls may JUST have peaked and are again swinging in the opposite direction. NBC/SurveyMonkey out today says 5% for Hillary (up 1% from their previous poll a week ago) and Reuters daily tracker which had the race tied a week ago, now shows a 4 point race for Hillary. Whichever side you are on, there is reason to be cheerful.
RCP national average has 6.8% undecided (was 6.6% and 9.3%). When those undecided are allocated proportionately, the national race is at 1.1% (2.5% and 3.7%). Thats a race now most like like W Bush vs Al Gore in 2000 (where Al Gore won more votes but W won the Electoral College and became President).
The actual race is for the Electoral College ie 'the map'. RCP Electoral College Map (no toss-ups) shows 294 (311 previous week, 340) EV votes for Hillary, 245 (227 and 198) EV votes for Trump. 270 is needed to win. The map has for the first time since RCP published it, with Hillary at under 300 EV votes. Since last week another state shifted for Trump (Ohio). So now against the last election (Obama-Romney 2012) Trump is up in 3 states (Ohio, Florida and Iowa) while Hillary is up in one (North Carolina).
The TV ad wars have Hillary and her SuperPAC up with TV ads in Arizona, Colorado Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Hillary was up with ads in Georgia which have now ended. Hillary's ad buy is 6.5 million dollars in those states. Her SuperPAC runs about the same amount in about the same states. Trump bizarrely has gone DARK. He has no TV ads up currently. (Trump's last ad buy was 2.5 million dollars last week, divided exactly proprotionately in the 4 big battleground states Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina). But he's now gone silent. Truly bewildering strategy. His next ad buy starts next week after the first debate.
But an anti-Hillary ad buy IS up just now, by the NRA (National Rilfe Association) which bought 5 million dollars in ads, half of which went nationally and half into 5 states - Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania - battleground states - plus Nevada - Trump trying to pick that up, plus.. Virginia (a waste of TV ads but its the home state of the NRA and they hate its former Governor current Senator and VP pick, Tim Kaine, so that is probably just the NRA being personal about the attack). For the record, Trump's next ad buy for next week is a broad set of states, it covers Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa. has taken down all ads other than four states, the real battleground of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. So the very expensive waste of TV ads in Michigan and Virginia has now ended. Because both sides ARE paying to do TV ads in seven states (Trump starting next week) we can say the race currently centers on those seven states. They are Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa. Everything else is either noise or bonus. Including the national polls from now till the end. These seven states will decide it.
The map has expanded for Trump as he seems to hold Iowa and is up in Ohio and Florida. I said previously Trump has to win both North Carolina and Pennsylvania (as Virginia and Colorado are off the table and Wisconsin and New Mexico and Michigan were never seriously in play). Now Trump has two difficult but alternate paths WITHOUT Pennsylvania. Both require that Trump wins in North Carolina (and FL and OH and IA). First is that Trump gets Nevada and Colorado. The second path is that Trump doesn't win Colorado but wins Nevada, New Hampshire and the single district in Maine. Trump is currently not seeming to try to win Colorado, he seems to be aiming for the second path as his alternate path to victory as Pennsylvania is not moving in his direction.
So the simplest path for Trump is to Trump wins all four big states of those four (and doesn't lose any states that Romney won). With FL, OH, NC and PA he wins the race. But Trump has to win all 4 or Hillary becomes President. If Trump wins 3 of the four, he has two other paths that require Trump to win Iowa and Nevada. If Trump wins FL OH NC IA and NV, then he either needs yet a Colorado; or instead of Colorado to add New Hampshire and the one district in Maine. So lets look at the RCP polling in those eight states. This is what decides the race:
Florida - Trump leads by 0.9% (last week Trump led by 0.2%, previous week Hillary led by 3.6%)
North Carolina - Hillary leads by 0.6% (was 0.7% week ago, and 0.3%)
Ohio - Trump leads by 2.0 (was Hillary lead of 1.8% last week, and 3.3% week before)
Pennsylvania - Hillary leads by 6.2% (was 5.8% and 6.0%)
For the alternate path, adding now 4 states to monitor:
Iowa - Trump leads by 4.3%
Nevada - Hillary leads by 0.2%
Colorado - Hillary leads by 3.0%
New Hampshire - Hillary leads by 6.0%
So the alternate map for Trump is not looking any easier than winning Pennsylvania but he seems to be trying the Iowa-Nevada-New Hampshire (and Maine 1 district) route. And remember, Hillary is also making a serious play for Arizona (down by 2.2%) and if Hillary can flip AZ, then the above math becomes meangless, even if Trump won Florida, Ohio, NC, Pennsylvania AND Iowa, if Hillary steals Arizona, she becomes President.
As a reminder, Obama won all eight of those states in 2008 and won 7 of the 8 (lost NC) in 2012. As of now, Hillary is still with a modest lead in the battlegrounds but she has no 'cushion' (yet) out of the other states she is contesting for, Arizona and Georgia. The play that Trump briefly tried for Michigan has now ended. We still have exactly 7 weeks to go. If you want to see last week's Countdown summary, its here. And my full Sept 1 Election Scorecard, it is here.
Campaign stops. Trump seems to have picked up some discipline to his unorthodox campaigning and now as I can see, he's headed to only battleground states in the immediate next days in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Hillary Clinton's schedule isn't as clear and she just cancelled/postponed a North Carolina event today. Last week saw the best array of Hillary's surrogates come to support her from Elizabeth Warren to Bernie Sanders to Michelle Obama to Barack Obama.
Campaign Staff. We're starting to see campaign resources catalogues. Not yet a perfect picture but many of the critical states are being reported. In general terms Hillary has about three times the paid staff as the partnership of Trump and the Republican party. I've found 1,480 for Hillary in 7 states including Arizona and Georgia, and 480 corresponding Trump+GOP staff in five of the same states not any in AZ or GA. But I don't yet have the full picture. I'm working on it..
Of the Senate Race, while we are here. RCP Senate Map (no toss-ups) says 49/51 for Republicans barely holding the Senate. (It was 49/51 last week and 50/50 two weeks ago). They give pick-ups for Democrats out of Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and a pick-up for Republicans out of Nevada, for a net +3 (was +4) Senate Seats to Democrats. The state of New Hampshire is the one that slipped back to remaining with the incumbent Republican by current polling.
The House Map by RCP is also up now. Currently if the Democrats were to sweep all 15 of the 'toss up' seats for the House as well as of course winning all that RCP projects they are ahead - the Democrats would be 15 seats short of the majority in the House. If we assign the toss-ups exactly evenly, the House would remain in Republican hands by a 22 seat majority.
And for the record. My latest forecast update (Sept 1) says Hillary will end up winning by 18%, get 448 EV votes to Trump's 90. Hillary to win 35 states and the District of Columbia; Trump to win 15 states. National vote distribution 53% Hillary, 35% Trump, 9% Johnson and 3% Stein and the rest. To see more of my current forecast, see the end of the Scorecard.
For those interested in the details of the race, two weeks ago I did an aggregation of the two '50 state' polls with the RCP in-state polling for the same period to give the best statistical view to every state as of August, published anywhere in the open on the internet. (I hope to update that after the month of September is done)
Next major scheduled event in race is one week from now, on Sept 26 when Trump and Hillary will have their first debate, at Hofstra University in New York State. It will be moderated by Lester Holt of NBC News. It will involve 3 topics that were just revealed: America's direction, Prosperity, and Security. It starts at 21:00 (9pm) local time NY.
Hi Everybody
Gosh this is brilliant. NY Times invited 4 respected pollsters to view their data before it was published and give THEIR count of what the polling data 'revealed'. So this is the SAME data but 4 experts who would conduct the survey and interpret the results. Boy is this revealing... NYT has it here
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/20/upshot/the-error-the-polling-world-rarely-talks-about.html?_r=0
So in addition to the 4, there is the group who DID the polling who also reported, so there are 5 interpretations of the SAME DATA. How much to professionals agree on the SAME DATA - 5 experts, four SEPARATE results, the furthest apart were 6 POINTS apart. One found a +5% for Hillary and the other -1% for Trump. A six point swing from the SAME data, depending on who interprets it.
The average of the five results is +1.75% for Hillary. The 'official' reported finding was +1% that is published and shown for example by RCP. But one respected analyst found from that same data that Trump is ahead by 1% and one found from the same data that Hillary is ahead by 5%. In the same data!
Why? Because of WEIGHTING the sample to expected voter turnout. We do not poll the ACTUAL voters on election day. We poll a tiny sample. A sample which may be correctly balanced male/female but most certainly will not be perfectly balanced by age, or by race, or by education, or by region of the state, or by profession/employed/unemployed/student or marital status or whatever. And THAT has to be done to such data. The un-weighted data is ALWAYS going to be far more old than young, because older people have more time on their hands (retired people) and often lonely, happy to answer a phone and do a survey. The poorest are far less likely to HAVE required communciations to do the survey (but can still vote) or have the time to take a poll (working bad shifts at some night-time job) or afraid to answer the phone (fearing a bill collector) etc.
The polled results ALWAYS have imperfect data on the population that will show up to vote. So the pollster has to do the weigh-ing of the data. What percent of respondents WERE black who responded. What do we EXPECT to be black turnout in this case, in the state of Florida. Etc.
I have a few times been upset at some polls with their samples (the CNN poll recently that was a clear outlier showing Hillary behind nationally in 4-way race). There are many more that I don't bother to bitch about here on the blog but when I see the result, I go dig through the 'cross tabs' and see oh, this guy only sampled half the Hispanic turnout that is expected, no wonder Trump is doing so well - etc; or another that had a turnout model of 50/50 men/women which in all elections is about 47/53 and this election is far more likely to be 45/55 or even more for women.
But its nice to see it 'measured' this way. Four professional pollsters (by the way, the 'Republican' pollster was not the one who got the -1% for Trump. The GOP pollster of the sample got a +1% finding for Hillary, same as the actual result as published but a Democratic-leaning pollster did get the best-Hillary result).
It comes to 'best way is to average polls' to try to eliminate bias. As I said, if those 5 analysts are averaged, they result in a 1.75% finding for Hillary lead in Florida, based on that data. The reported number was 1.0%. The extremes -1% for Trump or +5% for Hillary seem to be outlier opinions of unlikely voter turnout models or ratings.
NOW that said - it DOES matter of course what the turnout is. Republicans want the turnout down. Democrats want the turnout up. A negative campaign usually means suppressed voter turnout and this should become the nastiest campaign ever - although remarkably, so far, it hasn't yet been so. And scaring voters to the polls is perhaps a variation/change to that tactic and both sides are attempting to scare their side to show up. That should help Democrats if it pushes up turnout. BUT it may SKEW the polling - if unusually high numbers of white racist voters turn up (many models have the white turnout up) and whether the Hispanic vote wave emerges (some think Hispanic enthusiasm is down) and if the black surge of Obama votes will pass and be down compared to the last 2 elections. Those all matter to the outcome.
So my professional view - haha, I AM a professional pollster too, by background - is that Youth vote will be down vs 2012. Black vote may be down slightly but will still be above its historic average. Hispanic vote will be up significantly vs 2012. White vote thus will be down at least as % of total vote. The male/female balance will be exceptionally tilted to women. So for voter TURNOUT model, Hispanics & women up. Blacks about same. White vote down, youth vote down.
THEN we get the internal shifts within the model, how do women vote, more for Hillary than voted for Obama? (I think so). Black vote? About same for Hillary as Obama. Hispanic vote, more against Trump than was against Romney. Those produce a wave that there are not enough white male votes to counter and stop the election. BUT note. The POLLS as reported, do not necessarily CAPTURE that insight - because of exactly the issue NYT now proved. Five analysts looking at the same data can find 4 separate results that can be 6 POINTS apart !!! Pennsylvania could be tied. Or Texas could be tied. Thats a 6 point swing if the recent couple of polls from those states were by accident reported by analysts who happened to have a bias that was at the extreme. The more polls we get, the more we can be sure the problems are averaged out. Pennsylvania at a 6% lead for Hillary is PRETTY DARNED safe, so many PA polls are out. But TX a 6% Trump lead, it might be secretly a 3% race that has a few misleading polls out (or Arizona or Georgia) and remember, it goes both ways. Texas could seem like a -6% race and actually be six points THE OTHER WAY, in reality -12% for Trump (or Hillary be up by +12% in PA haha).
Back again to our 50 state model. You see in the model the bolded states. They have 3 or more in-state polls conducted within the month of August (up to first week of Sept). Those we can take as reasonably accurate. The unbolded states, they are less confident and the actual state could be more off than say one or two points.
..isn't this fun?
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | September 20, 2016 at 04:08 PM
Republicans want the high turnout. Mainly the "Monster" (Deplorable) vote. Those who haven't voted in years, but are at Trump rallies which overflow stadiums holding 10k.
Meanwhile, Hillary seems to have 3rd stage Parkinsons, gives brief speeches to dozens not filling high school auditoria.
http://www.dangerandplay.com/2016/09/17/the-enthusiasm-gap-sick-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-polls/
Posted by: tz | September 20, 2016 at 06:38 PM
Reposting:
Do-nothing Congress gets an earful from a fed-up Obama in weekly address
By Susan Gardner
"' The Republicans who run this Congress aren’t doing their jobs.
Well, guess what? Congress recently returned from a seven-week vacation. They’ve only got two weeks left until their next one.'
"President Obama let loose with some sarcasm and a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed at the Republican do-nothing Congress in this morning’s weekly address, leading off with Zika funding, resources for Louisiana after its devastating flooding, and approving Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court. But that was just the beginning."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/9/17/1571091/-Do-nothing-Congress-gets-an-earful-from-a-fed-up-Obama-in-weekly-address
Posted by: grouch | September 20, 2016 at 07:11 PM
@tz
"Meanwhile, Hillary seems to have 3rd stage Parkinsons, gives brief speeches to dozens not filling high school auditoria."
Sounds like a plausible Swift Boat attack. Baseless accusations that are difficult to defend against.
Posted by: Winter | September 20, 2016 at 08:10 PM
The Many Scandals of Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-scandals/474726/
176 Reasons Donald Trump Shouldn't Be President
http://www.gq.com/story/176-reasons-donald-trump-shouldnt-be-president-olbermann
How the Trump Organization's Foreign Business Ties Could Upend U.S. National Security
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/donald-trump-foreign-business-deals-national-security-498081.html
What We Know About Donald Trump's Scandal-Plagued Charity Foundation
http://www.vice.com/read/donald-trumps-charity-foundation-scandal
Posted by: grouch | September 20, 2016 at 08:24 PM
Trump used $258,000 from his charity to settle legal problems
By David A. Fahrenthold
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-used-258000-from-his-charity-to-settle-legal-problems/2016/09/20/adc88f9c-7d11-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html
"Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.
Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses."
Posted by: grouch | September 20, 2016 at 09:46 PM
Hi Everybody
Haha the pollsters give and the pollsters taketh away. Today the long enduring pain of Hillary being at less than 300 EV votes - a total of six days at that - came to an end. While Trump picked up a lead in the RCP 'no tossups' map in both Nevada and North Carolina, Hillary took back Florida. She's up to 301 EV votes again. BUT it does suggest right now, the fight is back-and-forth in 5 states (arguably only 4) ie:
Florida
Ohio
North Carolina
Nevada
Iowa (arguably no longer contested, Trump winning this one)
But as we know, even if Trump wins all 5 of those states, Hillary wins the election. Trump needs at least one state more (Colorado or Pennsylvania) or New Hampshire AND the one district in Maine. And Hillary is pretty safe in all those three states.
BTW California, haha, 17% for Hillary. New York, 21% for Hillary. So much for Trump and his original stupid idea of somehow flipping solidly blue states.
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | September 20, 2016 at 10:03 PM
'I've never encountered anything so brazen': Report details 'shocking' new revelations about Trump Foundation
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-foundation-2016-9
Posted by: grouch | September 21, 2016 at 01:25 AM
Tomi:
Princeton Election Consortium still shows Clinton 296 as of this moment:
http://election.princeton.edu/electoral-college-map/
Posted by: grouch | September 21, 2016 at 01:35 AM
There Is So Much Wrong With Donald Trump Jr.'s Skittles Tweet
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/everything-wrong-skittle-trump-jr-tweet
Posted by: grouch | September 21, 2016 at 01:44 AM
Trump Campaign Offices in the West Bank Offer Perfect Symbol of Trump’s Idea of America
By Ed Kilgore
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/trump-campaign-offices-in-west-bank-are-his-idea-of-u-s.html
Posted by: grouch | September 21, 2016 at 02:34 AM
OK, let's go back to Georgia. Tomi says that campaigning to get another 5% of the black vote would not be a good use of campaign resources. But...
What about gaining 10% more of the college educated white vote? That could flip the state, especially with the backing of Jimmy Carter, the former president who is still popular in Georgia. Carter also has an impact with Evangelicals.
So yes, I think Georgia could be blue. The changing demographics, and the unpopularity of the GOP candidate could swing it. Could already have swung the state.
Clinton would not have bothered to have any staff in the state if it was deep red, like California is deep blue, but she does have staff there. If you look at the RCP polling for Georgia it indicates that the state was in Clinton's hands for most of August, and has swung back to Trump. Given the volatility shown in polling, a swing back to Clinton would not be surprising.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/ga/georgia_trump_vs_clinton-5741.html
Posted by: Wayne Borean | September 21, 2016 at 04:27 AM
It is clear that the PotUS elections in the US are decided on voter turn out. And voter turn out is what is evidently worst predictable.
I remember how Tomi analyzed Obama's get out the vote efforts as decisive for the land slide results.
Posted by: Winter | September 21, 2016 at 06:21 AM
HuffPo warns us not to expect anything from the debates, at all:
There's No Debate
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/theres-no-debate_b_12090380.html
Posted by: Winter | September 21, 2016 at 06:28 AM
@Tomi
It'd be nice if you could visit the iPhone 7 launch blog post comments as we'd love to hear your view on calendar Q4 sales expectations.
(feel free to delete this comment when you do.)
Posted by: Asko | September 21, 2016 at 11:14 AM
Democrats' debate advice to Clinton: Let Trump screw up
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/clinton-debate-advice-228431
Posted by: talvi | September 21, 2016 at 12:09 PM
@talvi
It is always a bad idea to let the initiative slip. The best advice is to MAKE Trump screw up.
Posted by: Winter | September 21, 2016 at 12:32 PM
@Winter
I agree. The danger is in this debate is that Hillary might win the debate at technicalities which will not be that obvious ordinary people. Therefore Hillary must win clearly the debate(s) because a draw is basically a victory for Trump who is seen as the underdog.
I guess that Trump's tactic will be to interrupt as much as possible Hillary's talking or even talk over her (that is basically bullying Hillary) and throw those punch-lines (which I find very stupid but many people like them).
Hillary's job is actually pretty difficult because of "how do you debate with an smart-ass who does not follow rules of logic?". I guess that probably Hillary's strategy is to bury Trump with facts whilst playing the "teacher's role" (by pointing his grammar errors, pointing to his repetitions, etc.). Rubio has tried a little bit of this but he was pretty bad at it.
Posted by: talvi | September 21, 2016 at 12:47 PM
So the best advice for Hillary is to get Trump angry. A shrink might have some very good tips here.
Posted by: talvi | September 21, 2016 at 12:53 PM
@talvi
"So the best advice for Hillary is to get Trump angry."
That is the real price. If Hillary get Trump to lose his temper, he is gone. On the other hand, if Trump succeeds in making look Hillary as "weak" and "lacking energy", it is the end for her.
Posted by: Winter | September 21, 2016 at 01:01 PM