Countdown to the End of Trump: 9 Weeks. Here's the Summary. Hillary up by 3.7% and winning each of the 4 states that matter

Its 9 weeks to election day in the USA and we can finally forget about the orange-face ugly-hair small-handed racist bigoted sexist ignorant serial liar con artist tax-return dodging dude. But as a countdown I'll track the main numbers weekly till that glorious day.

 

Polling average: Hillary ahead by 3.4% in RCP average (4-way polls). It has 9.3% undecided. When those undecided are allocated proportionately, the national race is at 3.7%. This is a little below where Obama ended in 2012 against Romney.

 

The actual race is for the Electoral College ie 'the map'. RCP Electoral College Map (no toss-ups) shows 340 EV votes for Hillary, 198 EV votes for Trump. 270 is needed to win. The current map is essentially same as Obama vs Romney final result where Iowa and North Carolina are swapped. So by EV vote the result as of today is slightly better for Hillary now to what Obama did in 2012 but not as good as Obama did in 2008.

 

The TV ad wars have Hillary up with TV ads in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Trump is up with TV ads only in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The only four states that both sides 'agree' are the true battleground - ie both sides are willing to spend money to fight for are Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In the truest sense, those four states will decide the 2016 election (by current count, this situation may change). The only polls that matter now, are those for Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. For President that is. Everything else is either noise or bonus. Including the national polls from now till the end. These four states will decide it.

 

If Trump wins all four (and doesn't lose any states that Romney won) he wins the race. But Trump has to win all 4. If he loses even one then Hillary becomes President (assuming Hillary can't steal any other states that Romney won, like say Arizona). So lets look at the RCP polling in those four states. This is what decides the race:

 

Florida - Hillary leads by 3.6%

North Carolina - Hillary leads by 0.3%

Ohio - Hillary leads by 3.3%

Pennsylvania - Hillary leads by 6.0%

 

Remember, Trump has to win all four of those states else he cannot become President. At the moment Hillary is ahead in all of them but NC is razor-thin. Obama won all four of these states in 2008 and won 3 of the 4 (lost NC) in 2012. As of now, Hillary is very much in the lead. But we still have exactly 9 weeks to go. If you want to see my full Sept 1 Election Scorecard, it is here.

 

Of the Senate Race, while we are here. RCP Senate Map (no toss-ups) says 50/50. They give pick-ups for Democrats out of Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and a pick-up for Republicans out of Nevada, for a net +4 Senate Seats to Democrats. In the event of a tie in the Senate, its the Vice President who breaks ties so Democrats would 'win' with 50/50 Senate split. (the RCP House Map is not yet up)

 

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. 

 

Next major scheduled event in race is 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 6 topics that will be revealed one week prior to the debate. It starts at 21:00 (9pm) local time NY.

Comments

[Steve]

Rumble in the jungle 2, 3,and 4.

[Winter]

The Worst Case for Republicans: Trump Wins
http://reason.com/archives/2016/09/05/the-worst-case-for-republicans-trump-win

"Republicans don't seem to have prepared for an even bigger catastrophe that could occur Nov. 8: a Trump victory. In that case, they wouldn't be stuck with him for the next two months. They would be stuck with him for the duration of his presidency, and they would have to answer for him forever."

[Winter]

Only a special kind of person will work for Trump's diversity coalitoon:

Trump "Diversity" Advisers Push Conspiracy Theories and Fringe Ideas...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/trump-black-latino-voters-national-diversity-coalition?google_editors_picks=true

I wanted to give some goofy examples but simply could not chose.

[Mikko]

Tomi could you give your expert political analysis on these videos?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H133cTro1NQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apuA5CACTfs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7owEWsqtfM

Thanks in advance bro.

[Oystein]

Have you seen the WaPo/SurveyMonkey article? According to their poll, Clinton is ahead of Trump by 1% in Texas. Yes, you read that correctly, Texas. I know Tomi has predicted that this might be a battleground state, but to actually see it happening? I know, its well within the error margins, and Texas probably will go GOP on november 8th. But the fact that Texas is in play at all, tells us a lot of the state of Trumps campaign. Trump already has a very difficult election map, but if Hillary can force him to go spend time and money in places like Texas, the results might indeed become epic. Knowing Trump however, he will probably go campaign in Idaho, Nebraska or Wyoming or something similar.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-new-50-state-poll-shows-exactly-why-clinton-holds-the-advantage-over-trump/2016/09/05/13458832-7152-11e6-9705-23e51a2f424d_story.html

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Gang

Ok. I said Texas. I said it will be the tightest race counted the longest into the election night and the morning of Nov 9. A wild wild call. But is there any evidence. Well.. Washington Post has just released a massive 50 state polling result where each state had at least 500 interviews (each state qualifies as a fair individual poll) and they end their news story with the big bombshell, the unexpected tight race is... TEXAS with a ONE POINT race and have a guess who is ahead 46% to 45% today. Yes. Hillary leads in TEXAS. I said it will be the tightest race. It could go blue this year and I called it to go blue. It is TRULY in play. Wow. Is this not amazing

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-new-50-state-poll-shows-exactly-why-clinton-holds-the-advantage-over-trump/2016/09/05/13458832-7152-11e6-9705-23e51a2f424d_story.html

Now. Before Hillary tosses money into this VERY VERY expensive state, she will go into Arizona and Georgia first. She's just started with AZ and isn't yet in GA. Also she has to put Pennsylvania out of play before she can afford to take on Texas. The current fund-raising race is also a very big determinant on do they dare to try for Texas. But boy, even without her trying to campaign for it, Texas is tight. Wow. How cool is that. And yeah, little pat on the back. I've been calling this for a couple of months now. The math say so. Doing the demographics, it had to be close. And it is

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Taavi]

I don't care if Hillary kicks the bucket after the election day, I mean Tim Kaine is there and "ready from day one" that's what Hillary herself said haha.

Any party/ideology that resists inevitable progress and change that comes with it needs to go... And that's why the GOP needs to take as much of a beating in this election as humanely possible. It's not about Hillary/Trump at this point, it's about the House and the Senate. Here's hoping they BOTH flip to democrats and that requires a 15-18% landslide to Hillary on November.

Speaking of health issues wtf is going on here? I thought Hillary is a clear "one percenter" so in USA that means you have access to the best medical care on the planet, right? They really can't do something about those coughing fits for just the next 2 months?

[Millard Filmore]

@Taavi: "They really can't do something about those coughing fits for just the next 2 months?" Sorry, there is no cure for allergies. No doubt they could give her some kind of lozenge or mild medicine, but when you fly to a strange place, the reaction to new pollens and irritants will vary wildly.

Trump of course, has not released any credible medical report. The information I really want to know about Trump is his psychological profile.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Everybody

First on the CNN poll. It is a big enough poll to be statistically relevant. It shows Trump up by 2% nationally. But here's the thing. That poll has either by accident or design a bizarre balance of Republican vs Democratic respondents. It has 4% more GOP than DEM people who answered the survey. EVERY election forever has had larger Democratic than Republican turnout and essentially all polls also make sure to have this balance (ie CNN's own previous poll had +4% DEMOCRATIC interview sample) So CNN has by design or by accident, kind of put their finger on the scale, to tilt the polling SAMPLE from 'normal' slightly Democratic voter balance to Republican balance - a shift of 8%.

Now, this could be an honest mistake. EXCEPT that someone pointed out on Twitter - and I remember this now from that time - that oopsies, in 2012, exactly this same time, suddenly the CNN poll which had shown like all other polls before, a safe Obama lead, all at once had a switch in the polling for a Romney lead. This was before that famous debate. It turned out to be a total outlier, no other polls agreed with it, but that too was one where mysteriously the polling sample became overly Republican.

They are trying to create a fake narrative so that the race would seem to be a race.

The two major keys to this - one, the simultaneous NBC poll and WaPo polls had not shifted AT ALL. If you get 3 national polls out on the same day, and two show stable unchanged race and one shows a HUGE change - odds are the one huge change is an outlier.

The second issue - there is NOTHING to justify this. Trump hasn't gone and done some fantastical apology tour or Hillary gone and insulted the Pope or something. Nothing has happened that suggests the race has shifted in FAVOR of Trump - the Mexico trip / Arizona fiasco suggests rather an opposite direction.

So I do think its an outlier. Regardless, outliers also do get counted and RCP now has a tighter race at 2.4%. Fair enough. We live with that because there will also be outliers the other way and we won't eliminate those either. Just recognize - we go now by the state polls of Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania - as I wrote, because those are the only 4 states where both are spending money, thats where the battle is ongoing. The rest is either fake activity (or in the case of Trump - prepping for his TV network instead of campaigning) or its Hillary adding more states to what she'll win like in Arizona. But Trump has to win all 4 OH FL PA and NC. If he loses even one, he won't become President. And Hillary leads all four.

But I will of course also monitor the national race (4-way polls) and there is some tightening in that situation as of today.

(ok some more comments next)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Then some other items

Texas. The Dallas Whatever maybe Morning Star or something, the conservative newspaper of Dallas. It has endorsed a Republican for the past 5 decades straight. It today came out saying it cannot endorse Trump. WOW thats a big ouch. Right on the heels of that WaPo Texas poll of Hillary up by 1%.

Mississippi. The only other surprising finding of the WaPo poll of all 50 states that sits with what we've discussed, is MS. They find it also a battleground. I was not expecting MS to be that close but it seems to be (and there was one earlier poll that said so). The others in the formerly-Republican/red states that were now close, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina - those were not surprises to us.

BUT the WaPo poll ALSO finds opportunity for Trump. Most importantly WaPo counts Michigan as a battleground. I'm saying MI won't go red, no way. Its Governor didn't endorse Trump. It has that lead poisoning scandal in Flint that is going to cost the Republicans tons of votes up and down the state. And Obama is coming back to campaign in October and remind Michigan that he saved Detroit but haha.. Trump (like Romney) wanted the big 3 car makers to go bankrupt. This argument secured Ohio's vote in 2012, it will definitely swing votes also now. Michigan should be about a 10% state for Democrats. Trump might bring that to 5% but no way is he winning MI this year. BUT WaPo poll did find Michigan a battleground. And Trump is advertising there now.

Then I want to mention about internal polls. The WaPo poll is the widest poll we have in the public domain. Then many states (not all) have local polls, some only one or two, others, the more interesting states, have a handful or even more. But thats what we have for states. Nationally the best data we have is the Reuters daily tracking poll that has large enough daily samples, we can get pretty good demographic etc data out of it.

Now, consider Trump. That is roughly about the best data he has. Or he has to commission a survey if he wants more detail of a given state and perhaps ask some questions that his Campaign wants asked. Those are costly. Trump is a miser. Except for polling New York state because Trump is the narcissist and hopes his own state would love him, I don't see Trump authorizing a lot of other polls (he will reluctantly authorize a few).

Then Hillary. She has a DAILY poll which is more than 10 times the size of the WaPo poll that runs every single day in at least the main battleground states (including Arizona and Georgia but probably not Texas). Hillary knows EXACTLY what the race is. So watch her team and this WaPo poll. They WILL have that polling on Michigan. They KNOW what is the exact % for Michigan. If Hillary starts to advertise in MI then the WaPo finding is close to accurate and there is a concern. If Hillary lets Trump play with his money and she won't respond, there is nothing there.

Same with Arizona & Georgia. As we know, they've started already in AZ - meaning Hillary knows they have a good chance they could win AZ. It doesn't mean they are necessarily ahead there, but at least within striking distance so its at most 1 or 2 percent out. I would think Georgia is very similar in terms of where it stands, as Arizona (not the same demographically AZ is more Hispanic, GA is more black). But Missouri is also a tight race and its possible they go to MR instead of GA. Or even conceivably Mississippi.

On Texas, I am pretty sure Hillary won't deploy assets to Texas yet, she wants to first be sure she has the main battleground states covered. Texas could be a late play, around end of Sept/early Oct. If so, at least one of the others should be targeted because they are far cheaper states to try to win - Georgia, Missouri (or Mississippi or Indiana even).

BUT if Hillary suddenly goes 'defensive' in say Michigan or Wisconsin - or goes back to Colorado or Virginia TV ads, then she will probably delay going to Georgia or other states to 'attack'. The thing is, they KNOW how the race stands. They know how bogus that CNN poll is, for example (or if its actually the truth). And for us, the best key is the money. Now for Trump - he DOESN'T really know. He throws money more on a gut feeling and what some local politician from that state tells him.

Now next. The generals. Trump announced 88 generals and admirals are supporting him. Sounds like a huge number. Except that Romney had 500 and Hillary already has over 200. So again, this is where a Republican should be far ahead, and Trump is not.

Then onto the money race. Hillary has already given preliminary numbers for the month of August and raised 143 million dollars together with the Democratic party. That was divided so that 62 million is to her campaign and 81 million for the party. For the month of August all time, this is a record. Meanwhile Trump has not said anything now for several days and the gossip is, the numbers must be pretty bad. It also somewhat shines through the fact that the Trump campaign announced a 10 million dollar TV ad buy by press release but actually only bought less than half that. They may already be struggling with money. That should not be happening at the start of September. Badly failing campaigns start to run out of money mid-way October.

But we don't know. Hillary is certainly doing very well with her fundraising. Trump might also be, and just is waiting to do a bombshell news event about it.

Then back to Texas. We know Hillary and her SuperPAC are not on the air in Texas, but one Texas based Twitter follower of mine Tweeted a day ago (before this WaPo poll came out) that there are plenty of pro-Hillary or anti-Trump ads on TV in Texas but Trump does not have ads on his side. Thats weird. It may be that the person spotted the occasional national cable TV ad that the Hillary campaign runs. But there are a bunch of smaller organizations that aren't really monitored by the major news, which could be on the air in some states for whatever reason. Planned Parenthood CEO is a Texan woman (daughter of a past Texas Goveror woman) and they are doing pro-Hillary and anti-Trump ads, those could be running also in Texas. Or some other group(s). Or.. could be some very quiet local TV ads in selected markets that are intended to be 'stealthy' below-the-radar, to not let Trump even know that Hillary is actually already fighting for Texas. I just thought it was a curious comment, spontaneous and noteworthy. There are pro-Hillary and anti-Trump TV ads in Texas but nobody has been counting those or reporting on them (yet).

Then on the Hispanic outreach. Haha yeah Trump has had an erosion of his Hispanic outreach team, several quit in protest after the Arizona speech. But Hillary has not been running Spanish-language TV ads, only one targeted at Hispanics in English in a few battleground states. They are now rolling out their first Spanish-language Hispanic ads. The story about it was negative in tone (accusing Hillary of not doing this early enough) and the Campaign spokesperson said that they're actually starting earlier than Obama did in 2012. BUT it tells me, the Campaign once again, IS doing this by PLAN. And that they are doing roughly an Obama 2012 playbook but with of course updates and improvements based on lessons learned from 2012.

Then on the tax returns. A poll (forget which) just out says 85% of Americans want to see Trump's tax returns. A previous poll said 60%. The pressure is slowly getting bigger and the media are pestering Trump about it occasionally.

But on yeah, the coughing. Gosh, what a stupid story.

And lastly the debates. Trump has said its his intention to do all 3 debates and only a hurricane could keep him away. Lets see if that ends up being his 'final final' position haha.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Millard Filmore]

@Tomi: The CNN poll is likely tilted toward Trump due to pressure from the very top.

"CNN president Jeff Zucker have been close, personally and professionally, for more than a decade."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pete-tucker/cnns-trump-problem_b_10833064.html

Also, Trump has been making good on his dream of getting rich by running for President. "Trump raids RNC donor haul for a big pay day at Trump properties"

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/9/6/1567322/-Trump-raids-RNC-donor-haul-for-a-big-pay-day-at-Trump-properties

[grouch]

Oh, no! Media is unbalanced!

All three cable networks air Trump’s town hall live while showing Clinton’s rally in a tiny box
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/all-three-cable-networks-air-trumps-town-hall-live-while-showing-clintons-rally-in-a-tiny-box/

"Cable news networks CNN, MSNBC and Fox News on Tuesday showed Donald Trump’s town hall event live while video of Hillary Clinton was relegated to a tiny box in the corner of the screen."

When these dipshits get the orange Dipshit elected, they'll be gleefully manufacturing stories purporting to analyze the strange choice of the electorate. I'm still expecting to have to move to another country to watch the (purchased) toilet bowl swirly end of this experiment of a country.

[Winter]

Donald Trump's feud with John Kasich may prove fatal in Ohio
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2016/09/06/trump-feud-with-kasich-may-haunt-him-ohio/XX2P3Txa55mtplsWclABGJ/story.html

[grouch]

The Sexist Press
A lot of the media coverage of Hillary Clinton reeks of sexism.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-09-06/medias-sexist-coverage-of-hillary-clinton

[grouch]

Another article at usnews.com that seems to indicate some reporters have eyes for more than just advertising sales:

No Comparison
The press needs to stop grasping for false equivalencies between Trump and Clinton.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-30/stop-the-false-media-balance-between-trump-and-clinton

[grouch]

For now, Canada is not buiding a wall:

http://cbiftrumpwins.com/faq/

[grouch]

Would our cousins across the pond call this "cheeky"?

Barack Obama Just Nominated A Muslim To Be A Federal Judge. That’s A First.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-muslim-federal-judge_us_57cf2cfbe4b03d2d45970d3a?section=&

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Everybody

So that Washington Post / SurveyMonkey poll of all 50 states with 75,000 total interviews. I've now gone through the math. Its an ok instrument, the only 'each state' survey done into the public domain, but its not a perfect instrument as such. It has some system bias in it, that I've now calculated out.

So this is not a traditional consumer survey which has certain well-established 'market research science' methodology and measured statistical levels of confidence ie 'accuracy'. Its a consumer volunteer poll on the internet, but not one where consumers can go and self-select themselves (like Twitter polls, which massively over-favor Trump because of his huge online fan base and their eager support). Its a 'generic' polling system where interested consumers can log in, and get some survey. They can't 'select' to go and try to influence an 'election poll'. They might get a survey of buying a house or car or whatever. And this one for this WaPo poll, is a 'follow-on' survey only. For only those who had completed some OTHER survey first, they randomly are offered a chance to do another survey as an immediate follow-up, which deals with 'current affairs' ie even then they are not told its an election poll.

So we get immediately the typical SurveyMonkey polling issues. Its an online poll, so you have to have access to the internet to do it. Used to be that these severely undercounted mobile phone-only voters but now as the mobile internet use is rapidly increasing, that is no longer a severely damaging aspect to the survey but its a bias. People who are not on the internet, some older poorer people, some minority voters also often poorer, will not be represented 'fairly'. And their methodology tries to account for that by weighting the actual surveyed population against models of what the voter base will be (or should be) like.

We can expect the minority poor voter, and older less-educated (retired) voter types to be undercounted and the instrument likely to not get their actual opinions as well measured as the huge polling sample size would otherwise suggest. Note that in a kind of funny way, those cancel each other out for Hillary and Trump, as the first group is heavily skewing to Hillary voters, the second heavily to Trump voters. But if we think of the population, this is kind of 'cutting the edges off' and over-emphasizing the middle.

Now specifically, the NATIONAL number. That poll gives 50 state results. They look interesting and in many cases are close to other polls out recently, but some states are significantly off - Ohio better for Trump, Texas better for Hillary - than recent other polls have suggested. BUT its peculiar out of 75,000 surveys, that WaPo doesn't publish its overall national number, so we can see how this total survey compares to the other national surveys. Is this skewing more towards Trump or Hillary or is it very near the current average. And that is what I calculated out. First he easy part. Since they gave each state total surveyed population and percent, I just added the totals and found that the total 75,000 surveys resulted in essentially a perfect 50/50 tie. In reality 49.8% for Trump and 50.2% for Hillary but that is such a tiny variance, considering they only published full percentage results per state (not down to one decimal point, like 43.7% but just 47%) that 0.2% is a meaningless distinction. The total surveyed population they have results for, is a 50/50 tie for Hillary vs Trump.

That first off, suggests great news for Hillary. During the period the survey was taken, those 3 weeks in August, Hillary according to all other polls (their RCP average) was about 5% for Hillary, from a high of 8% down to 4%. And each of those state results is now reported for a survey instrument which found a national result of 50/50. Thus, the 'real' result SHOULD be even BETTER for Hillary in all of those 50 states, by about 4%.

Not so fast. The reason for this 50/50 results is the self-selection of the surveyed populations. So look at the state survey sizes. California the largest state by population (and vote) had 2,500 surveys submitted but Indiana, a state one fifth the size of California had 1,900 surveys. California is a blue state, Indiana is a red state. So either California should have had 9,500 surveys, or Indiana only down to 500 surveys, for a nationally relevant STATE-balance. The red states in this survey are SIGNIFICANTLY over-sampled and the blue states under-sampled. So I calculated out that math.

So I took each state internal results as the official state result by this method, but then weighed the state voter population (simplified, used the EV vote as the proxy and multiplier) to give a population-weighted result. Now California's result has properly 5 times the weight of Indiana's result but the voter percentage from California is exactly as SurveyMonkey found, as is Indiana's surveyed voter percentage. Now we can see what is the 'reality' that this instrument measured, nationally. So this survey result can be compared to other national polls and the RCP average.

When weighed by populations of the states, that survey of 50 states suggests a national election result of 40.5% for Hillary and 37.5% for Trump ie 2.9% lead for Hillary. Thats pretty darned close to the current RCP average and a little bit below what we'd expect for the 3 week period, but not by much. This is a good sign. But why didn't WaPo report these numbers then? I think its the OTHER THREE that it also reveals. What of Johnson, Stein and Undecided? That gets tricky. The full result of the 4-way polls when weighted by state-populations is:

Hillary 40.5%, Trump 37.5%, Johnson 12.0%, Stein 4.6% and Undecided 5.4%

That is far off from where it should be. Johnson polls at 8% and Stein at 3%, Undecideds are at 8.5% by current RCP average. So this SurveyMonkey poll seems to have a strong systematic bias that overcounts support of Johnson and Stein and undercounts the Undecided vote. I believe it means also that it reflects in a slight undercounting of both Hillary and Trump vote. They both should be about 1% higher than what SurveyMonkey found. This is probably why WaPo didn't give out these national numbers.

Note how big the error is. Compared to 'reality' ie the average of all recent polls by RCP, and our best measure of the real race, what Johnson and Stein get through SurveyMonkey is one third TOO HIGH. Of the SurveyMonkey result, they have one third bogus support. Or viewed the other way, from the RCP results. The SurveyMonkey adds HALF to their support ABOVE what it really is. Instead of Johnson at 8% he seems to get 12%. Thats massive error.

I believe this is part of the systematic bias in their methodology. Johnson and Stein supporters probably are more informed about the overall election than random voters. They thought about it more, decided they can't take either Trump or Hillary, and went to find another (or often in case of Stein, are Bernie supporters but also many Johnson supporters are 'Never Trump' Republicans). And these would typically be more 'connected' more 'information-hungry' voters, who would more be online and more inclined to give opinions online. A disinterested voter, or low info voter or someone who rarely goes online, would be far less likely to participate in a SurveyMonkey poll.

So whats the verdict. Its the only survey of its kind. In many states its the only poll or only recent poll we have. Its far better than nothing, and its national population-weighted result is very close to where RCP says it should be. BUT we know, it at least undercounts undecideds and overcounts Johnson and Stein support. It probably also undercounts slightly Hillary and Trump supporters.

Its a good tool to have. We should consider it as a good indicator of where the race is but an imprecise measure. I think any ACTUAL poll, done by market research polling methods (listed at RCP) will supercede this WaPo collection of 50 polls. But this is close enough for a good snapshot. It does identify nearly perfectly the same battleground states as other pollsters, RCP, Nate Silver, and various aggregation sites. But it probably has more systematic error, ie its 'finding' is probably with more divergence from reality than most other polls from that given state. So Texas is probably not one point for Hillary and Ohio is not 3 points for Trump currently, haha. But both are battlegrounds yes. Which is great news for the Democrats and devastating news for the Republicans. Expect at least Hillary's surrogates to start to do events in Texas, starting with Bill Clinton..

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Everbody

PS on the above WaPo/SurveyMonkey massive poll of 50 states. It just hit me as I re-read my comment, that it took them 3 weeks to compile those 75,000 surveys. Its VERY likely that WaPo will do a second survey, follow up, now during September, and publish on first week of October - THAT will be interesting, not on a national finding, but for ANY STATE because regardless of system bias of this instrument, if should pick up in-state movement. If Ohio moves from now -3% to say -1%, then its not necessarily true that Ohio is at -1% on October 5, but its likely Ohio HAS MOVED about 2% in favor of Hillary regardless of where the actual race is/was. THAT would make this instrument VERY interesting - for states like Arizona, Michigan, Georgia etc where one side or the other might try to steal a state. And obviously the big battleground states too, how is their movement. This tool, if run again, would probably be very good at picking up such movement, but less accurate in detecting the precise race as it now is, haha.

And hopefully they'll then survey a third time during October and give us their last count a few days before election day in November

It does look like WaPo got a lot of media attention from this poll, far more than most polls (and this is likely more expensive than most polls haha) so hopefully they'll do it again..

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Everybody

So Trump released his fund-raising. Not bad, 90 million dollars during August but Hillary raised 143 million and there are only 2 more months left. Its almost impossible now for Trump to catch her and I would guess, the Hillary campaign was waiting for this number, to ok their next TV ad buys. They're likely now going to go up in Georgia as well (in addition to Arizona).

In polling, Arizona has a fresh poll out with Hillary up by 1% over Trump. This poll was before Hillary's TV ads started running and only one day of the polling was after Trump's Arizona speech. So his standing likely will weaken after this poll came out.

The TV ad wars. Trump and his SuperPACs spending $7M in total this week but Hillary and her SuperPACs spending $9.7M. BUT Trump? They are wasting $2M in Virginia and $1M in Colorado so only $4M go against Hillary in the actual battleground. She outspending him by more than 2 to 1. Thats not how you catch up when you're behind.

In Florida Hillary $3M vs Trump $670K (4 to 1)
In Ohio Hillary $1.6M vs Trump $560K (3 to 1)
In Pennsylvania Hillary $1.4M vs Trump $420K (3 to 1)
In North Carolina Hillary $1.4M vs Trump $360K (4 to 1)

Rest of the states, Iowa Hillary outspending Trump 2 to 1. Nevada 1.2 to 1. In New Hampshire Trump outspending Hillary 2 to 1.

In Michigan Trump is up alone by $350K and meanwhile in Arizona, Hillary is up alone by $175K.

Then on other races, Marco Rubio is behind by 1% in his Senate re-election race in Florida vs his Democratic rival.

Thats about the main issues right now. Trump's also been saying some silly things about his Tax Returns, and plenty of silly or contradictory things in his national security speech. His awesome secret plan to defeat ISIS is now, apparently, ask the Generals to come up with a plan in the first 30 days when he's President? And previously Trump bragged that he knew more about ISIS than the Generals. So much for his secret plans..

And the Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi bribe is increasingly now in the press, Trump not only gave her a bizarre illegal contribution directly from a charity (illegal, and was now fined for it) but he also arranged a huge fund-raiser for her. And Trump claims there was no quid pro quo for her dropping the case against Trump University. Oh, and Trump even said he doesn't know Bondi, has never talked to her. HAHA. Trump who arranged a Million-dollar Fund-raiser for her!! Doesn't know her.. plenty of pictures of them together.

Tomi Ahonen :-)