This is the third of my monthly series of the Communities Dominate blog Election Scorecard (to see the first, published August 1 right after the Conventions, its here and the second, on Sept 1, is here). I waited to get the debate measurements in, but now the real race is at its hottest. This blog is intended to be a comprehensive survey of the race covering every aspect from the candidates to the campaigns, from fund-raising to staffing to issues to debates to TV wars. Anything that can be measured will be. Everything is 'rated' hence the term 'scorecard'. I will update this every month until the election on November 8. I will use as much empirical data as possible, plus then various observations and my own best evaluations of the other aspects of the race. First lets do a numerical summary of where the race stands:
NUMERICAL SUMMARY
As of 3 Oct (numbers in parenthesis are 31, Aug and 31 July, 2016), with 38 days to go in the contest, the race measures stand as follows. Please note, the numbers are based on the average of the first 6 polls published after the debate but reported on RCP, not the average at RCP which often includes older polls from before the debate:
POLLING AVERAGE (via RCP):
+3.7% advantage to Hillary Clinton on Aug 31 via RCP on 4-way race (was +4.4% on Aug 31, and 1.1% on July 31)
Gallup Favorability vs Unfavorable Oct 2 (vs Aug 30 & July 28):
Hillary Clinton +42% / -54% = -12% . . . improved +4 in 30 days . . . (was Aug 30 -16%, was July 28 -19%)
Donald Trump +33% / -63% = -30% . . . worsened -2 in 30 days . . . (was Aug 30 -28% was July 28 -23%)
ELECTORAL COLLEGE STATUS (RCP):
322 Clinton vs 216 Trump on Aug 31 'No Tossups' map on RCP (was 363 C vs 176 T on Aug 31, was 322 C vs 216 T on July 31):
Hillary Clinton leads RCP average of polling in: CO, FL, GA, NV, NH, NM, NC, PA, VA, WI
Donald Trump leads polling in: AZ, IA, OH
Since Aug 31, Trump picked up leads in Iowa and Ohio
TV AD WAR
Campaigns or SuperPACs have ads on TV in:
Hillary Clinton TV ads on air at start of October in AZ, CO, FL, IA, NB, NV, NH, NC, OH, PA
Donald Trump TV ads on air at start of October in: CO, FL, IA, ME, MI, NV, NH, NC, OH, PA, VA, WI
(Bolding indicates states where both campaigns are on the air)
Hillary Clinton aired 75,300 TV ads paying $61.7M for them in the 4 weeks ending Sept 24
Donald Trump aired 19,700 TV ads paying $15.2M for them in the 4 weeks ending Sept 24
Since July, Hillary has taken returned with ads in Colorado and added Arizona and Nebraska. She ran ads for 1 week in Georgia. Trump has run off-and-on TV ads, one week only going essentially silent, airing a total of 80 ads in 4 states (not 80,000 ads, just 80 ads) of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Now he's up in all the states in the list adding Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin.
FINANCIAL RACE
Financial Race Numbers Lag One Month so Numbers for End Of August (July, June):
Hillary Clinton raised $60.0M ($52.3M, $36.2M) from supporters; has $68.4M in the bank ($58.6M, $44.4M)
Donald Trump raised $39.7M ($36.7M, $22.9M) from supporters; has $50.0M in the bank ($38.7M, $20.0M)
Democratic forces in total raised $154.0M ($94.6M, $146.3M); have $194M in the bank ($140M, $139M)
Republican forces in total raised $90.0M ($67.9M, $81.1M); have $103M in the bank ($78M, $61M)
(totals include the campaign numbers of the above, plus SuperPACs and the party funds)
STAFF
End of Sept Clinton Campaign has 789 (703, 651) full-time paid staff
Trump Campaign has roughly 138 (82, 74) full-time paid staff, but Trump also employs consultants, total including consultants 202 in Sept
The Trump Campaign has 'outsourced' the 'ground game' to the Republican Party. The party has allocated 251 paid staff currently to support Trump at end of SEpt, so the 'apples-to-apples' valid comparative number of paid staff for Trump, own paid, GOP paid, plus consultants is 453
Total Democratic Party Presidential and Local Election paid staff (including above) 2,593
Total Republican Party Presidential and Local Election paid staff (including above) 948
NOTE: Hillary Clinton has published volunteer numbers for 3 states that suggests she already has about 300,000 volunteers signed up just in the battleground states (roughly matching Obama) and significantly more nationwide. Trump is not publishing any numbers on their volunteer outreach and is likely far behind where Romney was at this point in 2012 when Romney ended with 40,000 volunteers for election day.
REPORT CARDS:
Clinton as Candidate: 4.0 (grade of A) . . . was 4.0 (A) and 4.0 (A)
Clinton on Issues: . . . 3.6 (grade of A-) . . was 3.6 (A-) and 3.6 (A-)
Clinton Campaign: . . 4.0 (grade of A) . . . was 4.0 (A) and 4.0 (A)
Trump as Candidate: 0.8 (grade of D-) . . was 1.3 (D+) and 1.3 (D+)
Trump on Issues . . . 1.6 (grade of C-) . . . was 1.8 (C-) and 2.0 (C)
Trump Campaign: . . 1.6 (grade of C-) . . . was 1.7 (C-) and 1.1 (D)
The Trump campaign has a bad candidate, running on bad issues, with a campaign that is horrid. He faces a great candidate, running on great issues, and on a campaign that is brilliant. This is not going to be a close race. It cannot be.
COMMUNITIES DOMINATE RATINGS
In the early primary race I posted my evaluations of the contestants in both primary races, looking at strengths in areas like fund-raising, debating, polling, etc. For the General Election 2016 I will post 4 ‘report cards’ of my ratings based as much as possible on independent metrics but also often on my own personal evaluation. These will allow comparisons not only of the two competing campaigns, but also to see how they performed compared to the previous month. I will be using the US school grading scale, where A is excellent, D is poor (and there is no E, but F is failing). In mathematical conversion, an A is worth 4 points, B worth 3 points, C worth 2, D worth 1 and F worth 0 points. For non-Americans, they will understand how the numerical values will be thus derived. There is a ‘plus’ and ‘minus’ grading also, which adds or subtracts one third of a point, and I may use such grades if needed, ie a B+ would be worth 3.3 points or a C- would be worth 1.7 points.
Note that all grades are ‘graded on a curve’. The race will be a two-person (or possibly becoming a 3-person) race. I will not grade current candidates against those politicians who have dropped out of the race (comparing them to say Marco Rubio or Bernie Sanders). I will not compare them to previous candidates (like say Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan). And I will not compare the top of the ticket to the VP choices (Tim Kaine and Mike Pence). While Hillary Clinton is the second least liked candidate to ever run for President in any year as far as Gallup has measured candidate attributes (and Donald Trump is obviously the worst) I will be assigning Hillary the A grade on ‘likeability’ because she is the BETTER OF THE TWO FINALISTS. Even as she is historically incredibly poor on this metric, would have scored an F on any other year, she gets an A because we have to ‘grade on a scale’ - the comparison is not against a hypothetical idealistic candidate, the comparison is Hillary vs Trump. And because Trump is the worse of these two candidates, it means Hillary is better on this attribute - and thus she gets an A.
The question then becomes, how do we rate TRUMP against Hillary on this metric. As you will see below, compared to Hillary, on likeability, Trump scores a C (he is down from a B). Again, we are scoring on ‘grading on a curve’ and we will not force each scale to have an A and an F, but we force each grade to yes, have an A. Whoever is the better of these two choices will always get the A (and if Johnson gets into the debates so he would be reasonably 'viable', I will then adjust to allow his measures to be considered too). In general one could say, a Presidential race has five sets of variables. First there are the candidates. Then we have their political positions and third we have the campaigns (their resources such as fund-raising and staffing, plus the tactical decisions of deciding where to compete, and what kind of assets are deployed there, etc). I include the VP choice on the ‘campaigns’ as nobody really votes for the VP ahead of the President but they do impact the race, somewhat. These three items all are in the control of the campaigns. Then there are outside issues, beyond the control of the campaigns but which may affect the campaign, such as say a foreign policy incident, a dramatic change in the economy, or for example a terrorist incident. And lastly there are of course the voters.
CANDIDATES
HILLARY CLINTON . . . . . . . . . . DONALD TRUMP
Likeability . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . Likeability . . . . . . . D (C, B)
Competence . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . Competence . . . . . D
Temperament . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . Temperament . . . . F
Public speaking . . A . . . . . . . . . . . Public speaking . . D (D, F)
TV interviews . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . . TV interviews . . . . C
Debating . . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . . Debating . . . . . . . F (C, C)
GRADE POINT AVERAGES ON THE ISSUES (that matter to moderate/undecided voters)
Hillary Clinton 4.0 (A)
Donald Trump 0.8 D- (1.3 D+, 1.3 D+)
(Note Trump has two failing grades: temperament and debating, as well as 2 poor D grades; Hillary Clinton has a perfect score of all A's)
Trump has one score changed from end of August. His debating was far worse against Hillary in one-on-one debates than it was against Republicans on a friendly audience and many rivals per debate. All public polls reviewed his debate performance as atrocious, he lost by a MARGIN of two to one. The only saving grace for Trump is, that his core supporters don't care about his faults, so Trump's polling did not collapse. Meanwhile Trump's likeability gap keeps getting worse. hence his likeability (relative to Hillary) score falls from C to D. Trump's overall average stays unchanged. Hillary scores unchanged in the past 30 days.
Gallup Favorability vs Unfavorable Aug 30 (vs July 28):
Hillary Clinton +42% / -54% = -12% . . . improved +4 in 30 days . . . (was Aug 30 -16%, was July 28 -19%)
Donald Trump +33% / -63% = -30% . . . worsened -2 in 30 days . . . (was Aug 30 -28% was July 28 -23%)
The two are the most disliked candidates ever to run for President on a major ticket. Hillary Clinton’s favorability has improved again somewhat in the past 30 days but is still the most underwater if measured against any previous election year, at -12%. Its however a 4 point improvement in 30 days. If the same trend were to continue, she'd still be at -7% by election day. Trump's score of -30% has now set the new record for worst measured ever, after the disaster of the debate. Trump has only seen his unfavorability proceed to get worse.
On the scoring, Trump now has a significant difference in unpopularity vs Hillary which is why Trump's score was reduced. On Competence, there is no question Hillary is the most experienced candidate ever to run for President, as Marco Rubio said. Or how President Obama said in his speech at the Convention, Hillary is more competent than Barack himself was when he was nominated, as well as more competent than Bill Clinton was - to which Obama jokingly apologized to Bill who was in the audience and laughed. But the vast pouring of support by over 120 foreign policy and national security leaders from both sides of the aisle, sing loudly the praises, that Hillary is definitely qualified. The Republicans may want to question her ‘judgment’ (on which score again Trump would sink far worse) but on experience, Hillary is clearly the most qualified candidate not just this year, but of anyone at least going back to Dwight Eisenhower. Even if we graded against all past candidates, Hillary would still score an A on this attribute.
On Competence Trump is almost disqualifyingly incompetent. He gets a poor grade D but not an F, because he HAS run several giant Billion-dollar construction projects and run hotels etc. He has run many of them poorly, including six to bankruptcies and managing to rack up a 916 million dollar personal income LOSS in just one year, but he ALSO has employed thousands and while he often has been convicted of discriminatory practises, of underpaying and not paying his staff and suppliers, and of hiring foreign labor to undercut local salaries, etc; that is still all some type of somewhat-successful business competence. Perhaps not the ideal type of competence for a businessman to attempt to run for President (compare to for example how much more ethically and far more successfully fellow New York Billionaire Michael Bloomberg had built his business) but it still is some achievement. A survey of living members of the Council of Economic Advisors to the President, of 50 prominent economists on both sides of the aisle, serving 8 Presidents back to Nixon and Ford, including 5 Republicans, found not one former Economic Advisor being able to support Trump. Of the Fortune 100, not one CEO endorses Trump. This has never happened to a Republican nominee before (Hillary is endorsed by 11 of those CEOs). Trump also has not received even one endorsement by a major newspaper. Not one. Several Conservative newspapers that have NEVER endorsed a Democrat in over 100 years of their existence, now endorse Hillary. For the 'businessman' this is catastrophic un-endorsement of his core area of competence.
Temperament was an attribute I was not expecting to include in the Report Card, but Trump has made this such a major issue, we have to include it. Trump’s childish obsessive temper tantrums which include such outrageous and deeply disturbing behavior as the attacks on the Judge Curiel (the US born Judge who has Mexican parents); the requests to have Russia hack into the email servers of Trump’s political opponent; and the attacks on the family of a fallen US soldier to now, after the debate, Trump started a week-long feud with a beauty queen and about her weight. Trump has a dangerous temperament that suggests a hair-trigger and a wafer-thin skin. The office of the President is often faced with global crisis where information is not immediate and not clear, and may change drastically over days or even weeks. As John F Kennedy thought of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the nearest moment the planet was to a nuclear war, the main factor that kept the world from that nuclear nightmare, was the cool heads and patience on both sides during a crisis that lasted over a week. Trump cannot go hours without lashing at anyone who pokes a Tweet at him. Hillary Clinton showed her temperament in the 12 hour grilling of the Benghazi witch-hunt (a Congressional commission which some Republicans admitted was set up only to damage Hillary’s favorability). If there is a politician who can take attacks and still hold her calm, its Hillary. Even against most historical comparisons, she would rate an A. And Trump, he is by far the worst candidate on this scale. The rating of A for Hillary and F for Trump does not do justice for how poorly tempered he is.
A candidate is not just the internal person, how good or bad they would be as a President; for a Presidential election, it is also about ‘selling’ that candidate. The candidate has to appear at mass audience events and rallies, do TV interviews and debates. Some candidates are great at campaigning and better at that than actually governing - compare W Bush to his dad, George HW Bush. Daddy Bush was not very good at campaigning but a better executive; his son W Bush was far better at the showman to campaign but then a disaster at governing. And here we do have a showman in Trump and a boring ‘technocrat’ in Hillary Clinton. You’d think Trump easily dominates Hillary on all promotional attributes. But we’ve now seen both, and we know how this goes. On public speaking, if you put Trump in front of Teleprompters, he will deliver a speech that he has not authored himself, in a wooden, cumbersome way, often interjecting his ad-lib repeats of various lines. That makes it sound like Trump was a moron. But even so, when forced to read a ‘proper speech’ with Teleprompters, Trump does a weak job. That is Trump at his best. When he is without a Teleprompter, he is a total train-wreck. Since the Campaign Manager ('Chairman') Paul Manafort was fired and fresh management was brought in as Bennett and Conway, Trump has now stayed on Teleprompters and he has done marginally better in public speaking, but only earning him a D score rather than the failing F he had a month ago. Hillary? She’s no Obama, she’s no Bill Clinton, she’s no Elizabeth Warren. But she will deliver a well-rehearsed speech and do it adequately well. This is a binary choice, the better of the two gets the A, and Hillary scores the A.
On TV interviews the situation is not as bad. Trump got over $2 Billion dollars worth of free publicity in the primary season, where a rival who might run $100 million dollars of TV ads, was totally crushed in the airtime wars. But current TV visibility is now based on ‘fairness’ where most networks try to give equal time for both sides. Fox will always give Trump more and similarly MSNBC will do that for Hillary. But of the four moderate networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN - the race is even. A Media Matter survey for June of total TV interview air-time found Trump leading Hillary by 2 to 1 in total time; but that was only because of the enormous visibility given to Trump by Fox. When Fox and MSNBC are removed (talking mainly to base voters already fully committed) the four other networks had nearly even total time between the two. Trump’s only advantage he had in the primary race is now neutralized. Then it comes an issue not of quantity but quality. Whenever Hillary Clinton is on TV, she stays on message. When most of her surrogates are on TV, they tend to be promoting her issues and mostly get to stay on the positive side of issues about Hillary (or on Trump’s latest mess). Again, his TV interviews could be run in continuous loop by the Hillary campaign and it would only help her. Now, the Trump surrogates spend most of their time trying to defend the indefensible, rather than advancing Trump’s messages. As a TV interviewee, Hillary is reserved and seems calculated, and comes across at times like she’s got something to hide. That is true. But Trump comes across as a petulant child, an overbearing bully, and utterly incompetent. He makes Sarah Palin’s interviews seem like interviewing a Nobel Prize winner in Physics. That said, the TV interviewers have not yet figured out how to control Trump. He just interjects his maddening ‘Excuse me, excuse me’ and then pushes onto his silly statements, ignoring questions and babbling onto whatever comes next to his tiny mind. So Trump kind of ‘wins’ in many interviews where the TV interviewers are made to look like incompetent morons. So while Hillary gets the obvious A on this grade, Trump gets a C, because he can overpower interviewers and steal the situation.
As to debates. Now the first debate is done and only the most fanatical Trumpists would dare to declare that Trump won. Even most polls find a slim majority of Republicans admitting, Trump lost. In the Fox poll, Trump's loss was at a 3 to 1 ratio, across 9 polls that asked the question, voters rated Hillary the winner by more than a 2-to-1 ratio. (These are the real scientific polls obviously, not the fake online instant polls where you can vote several times). Trump's debate performance shows a total lack of preparedness and a temperament that invites ridicule such as Saturday Night Live's opening skit for their season premiere, a level of ridicule that the nation had previously only seen with Sarah Palin and which helped doom her credibility. Hillary was even more solid than she was with Bernie and smiled and stabbed at Trump playing various debating tricks on him and setting traps. So as a comparative rating when I give Hillary the A, I give Trump an F. Trump would be better served not showing up at the two remaining debates, as his coach, Rudy Giuliani said immediately after the debate. Almost all of Trump's surrogates admitted on Tuesday and Wednesday that Trump lost, until Trump suddenly got angry and insisted that his surrogates have to argue that Trump actually won the debate, placing them in an awkward position.
Note that as we have just over 1 month left in the race and Trump is falling further behind, his last conventional way to catch Hillary was if Trump was going to emerge as the stronger candidate. He isn't. He is weak by every measure. So by this measure there is no hope of Trump catching Hillary by November. Lets see about the Issues.
ISSUES
Probably most voters vote for the candidate more than the issues. Like this year that will be even more true than usual, because of the strongly polarizing people on the top of both tickets. But issues do matter. Here is my gut feeling ratings of where the major issues are and how the candidates are viewed:
ISSUES BY CANDIDATE (Rated by the opinions of moderates/Independent & undecided voters only, excluding partisan supporters on both sides)
HILLARY CLINTON . . . . . . . . . . DONALD TRUMP
Terrorism . . . . . . . B (C, C) . . . . . . Terrorism . . . . . . . A
Foreign Policy . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . . Foreign Policy . . . F
Taxes . . . . . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . . Taxes . . . . . . . . . D (C, C)
Economy . . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . . Economy . . . . . . D
Immigration . . . . . B . . . . . . . . . . . . Immigration . . . . A
Gun Control . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . . Gun Control . . . F
Education . . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . . Education . . . . . D
Family issues . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . . Family issues . . . D
Womens issues . . A . . . . . . . . . . . . Womens issues . F (D, D)
Minorities . . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . Minorities . . . . . . F
Employment . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . Employment . . . . C
Religion . . . . . . . . B . . . . . . . . . . . . Religion . . . . . . . A
Environment . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . . . Environment . . . . D
Crime . . . . . . . . . C . . . . . . . . . . . . Crime . . . . . . . . . A
(above are all subjective grading by Tomi T Ahonen, included based his guess of what issues are likely to be most relevant to voters in 2016, in no particular order; and graded based on recent political views and the opinions of those expressed in moderate publications and by moderate pundits and experts. Future Report Cards will reflect any polling done on those issues)
A few grades have changed in the past 30 days. The voters are trusting Hillary more on terrorism one of Trump's strong-holds. Some polls find Hillary ahead on it. I'm still giving this to Trump but she is closing the gap. On Taxes, the bombshell that Trump hasn't paid taxes for 18 years, combined with his bragging about it both in the debate and afterwards, is not going to go well with voters. But some, more Tea Party oriented voters will admire him for it, so its not a failure, just a very bad grade. The women's issues grade however, that was destroyed at the debate and its aftermath with Alicia Machado the former Miss Universe winner.
GRADE POINT AVERAGES ON THE ISSUES (that matter to moderate/undecided voters)
Hillary Clinton 3.6 (A-) . . . (was 3.6 (A-), 3.6 (A-))
Donald Trump 1.6 (C-) . . . (was 1.8 (C-), 2.0 (C))
(Note Trump has four failing grades: Foreign Policy, Gun Control, Womens Issues and Minority issues, as well as 5 poor D grades; Hillary Clinton has no scores worse than C passing grade)
Perhaps the single biggest issue is the Supreme Court. It is driving partisan voter activity on both sides, there is no obvious ‘advantage’ for either side because Republicans want a conservative Justice, and Democrats a moderate Justice; and nationwide there is no clear preference one way or the other. This may evolve into more of an issue as the Campaign continues into the next months. But on the issues overall, no salvation there for Trump. He is far behind with 70 days left in the race, and the issues are not stacking up so to help him overcome his increasing deficit to Hillary. Maybe a strong campaign can fix things?
CAMPAIGNS
Part of winning is the candidate. Part of winning are the issues. But part of winning is the Campaign. A losing candidate with bad issues, but an excellently-run campaign can win, as we saw in the W Bush 2004 campaign against John Kerry. The Campaign consists of fund-raising - in the US election money plays a disproportionately large part governing everything from TV ads, to travel budgets, to campaign staff hiring, to polling to data analysis. But the Campaign also means surrogates, the TV ads, the electoral map, etc. And I will include the VP here in this section, because the VP really does not matter much in most races except perhaps modestly in winning the home state of the VP.
CAMPAIGN SCORES (in parenthesis old score from July 31, if there has been a change)
HILLARY CLINTON . . . . . . . . . . . DONALD TRUMP
Fund-raising . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . Fund-raising . . . . . . B (B, C)
Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . C (C, D)
Management . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . Management . . . . . . F (D, F)
TV ads . . . . . . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . TV ads . . . . . . . . . . . C (C, D)
Surrogates . . . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . Surrogates . . . . . . . . D
Big Data operation . . A . . . . . . . . . Big Data operation . . D
Vice President . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . Vice President . . . . . C
GRADE POINT AVERAGES
Hillary Clinton 4.0 (A) . . . . (was 4.0 (A), 4.0 (A))
Donald Trump 1.6 (C-) . . . (was 1.7 (C-), 1.1 (D))
(Note Trump has one failing grade, management, and 2 poor D grades; Hillary Clinton has a perfect score of all A's)
The Trump Campaign had been improving in August compared to July. It reflected Kellyanne Conway's role, trying to create a kinder-gentler Trump. That ended at the debate and now the campaign is a disaster again. The campaign is quietly searching for its FOURTH Campaign Manager in as many months. The Campaign struggles still to find any competent staff and spends much of its effort putting out fires and attempting to find solutions to bridges long since burned by Trump in the previous 15 months. Several senior staff have been fired or resigned turning out criminals with wanted records, or for racism or sexism. For contrast, while Hillary Clinton is no angel pussycat as a candidate, she has a perfectly-tuned finely-oiled machine as her Campaign, firing on all cylinders, capitalizing on Trump's mistakes and hammering him in battleground states with barrages of deadly TV ads. So as the Candidate is weak, and he's weak on the issues, can a powerful Campaign help Trump catch up to and overcome Hillary. Not this Campaign. Now we await to see will Trump pull the trigger and fire Conway (or demote her) and give the Campaign to yet another patsy to pretend to run in the final weeks. A suicide mission, certainly for any 'professional' as it would permanently stain that person's career.
FINANCIAL RACE
Financial Race Numbers Lag One Month so Numbers for End Of August (July, June):
Hillary Clinton raised $60.0M ($52.3M, $36.2M) from supporters; has $68.4M in the bank ($58.6M, $44.4M)
Donald Trump raised $39.7M ($36.7M, $22.9M) from supporters; has $50.0M in the bank ($38.7M, $20.0M)
Democratic forces in total raised $154.0M ($94.6M, $146.3M); have $194M in the bank ($140M, $139M)
Republican forces in total raised $90.0M ($67.9M, $81.1M); have $103M in the bank ($78M, $61M)
(totals include the campaign numbers of the above, plus SuperPACs and the party funds)
The Clinton Machine has outraised the Trump Machine every month of the race. We do not have September numbers yet, but Trump shows no signs of catching up to Hillary, and now its the last month to go. Hillary's campaign said they expect to hit their target of 1 Billion dollars raised cumulatively for this race, a record. A large number of Republican fund-raisers have said they can't support Trump and some have come out saying they'll vote or even raise funds for Hillary instead. Republicans like Meg Whitman, ex CEO of Hewlett-Packard, who ran for Governor of California and who has been a vocal moderate business wing Republican, and voice in fund-raising for the GOP, have started to appear with Hillary Clinton at her rallies. Trump is resorting to 'Nigerian prince' style email scam language in raising money online and sells various campaign items like lawn signs to raise money. Trump also paid out 8 million dollars to a Texas online provider who handles Trump's online outreach - including its fundraising. Those payments, a tax of 22% of all money raised by Trump in July - have received a lot of attention. It seems they are a commission-type of payment to the online fund-raising, which makes Trump's fund-raising a very expensive enterprise, similar to how Dr Ben Carson paid out an incredibly high percentage of money taken in, as commissions to those raising money online.
One way to win a race is to just overspend the other side, to outraise them and to use the money to crush the other side, like W Bush did against John Kerry in 2004. Trump is behind, but he is also behind in money, so if anyone is threatened to be crushed in the money race, thats Trump, not Hillary.
STAFF
End of Sept Clinton Campaign has 789 (703, 651) full-time paid staff
Trump Campaign has roughly 138 (82, 74) full-time paid staff, but Trump also employs consultants, total including consultants 202 in Sept
The Trump Campaign has 'outsourced' the 'ground game' to the Republican Party. The party has allocated 251 paid staff currently to support Trump at end of SEpt, so the 'apples-to-apples' valid comparative number of paid staff for Trump, own paid, GOP paid, plus consultants is 453
Total Democratic Party Presidential and Local Election paid staff (including above) 2,593
Total Republican Party Presidential and Local Election paid staff (including above) 948
NOTE: Hillary Clinton has published volunteer numbers for 3 states that suggests she already has about 300,000 volunteers signed up just in the battleground states (roughly matching Obama) and significantly more nationwide. Trump is not publishing any numbers on their volunteer outreach and is likely far behind where Romney was at this point in 2012 when Romney ended with 40,000 volunteers for election day.
Again in terms of the 'magic bullet' to come from behind and win in a political race, some have done it with a strong ground game, like Obama did in 2012 moving from a razor-tight election into a dominating victory against Romney. But the side with the ground game advantage is not Trump and again this bodes better for a Hillary landslide than a Trump come-from-behind recovery.
TV ADS INTO AUGUST
Campaigns or SuperPACs have ads on TV in:
Hillary Clinton TV ads on air at start of October in AZ, CO, FL, IA, NB, NV, NH, NC, OH, PA
Donald Trump TV ads on air at start of October in: CO, FL, IA, ME, MI, NV, NH, NC, OH, PA, VA, WI
(Bolding indicates states where both campaigns are on the air)
Hillary Clinton aired 75,300 TV ads paying $61.7M for them in the 4 weeks ending Sept 24
Donald Trump aired 19,700 TV ads paying $15.2M for them in the 4 weeks ending Sept 24
Since July, Hillary has taken returned with ads in Colorado and added Arizona and Nebraska. She ran ads for 1 week in Georgia. Trump has run off-and-on TV ads, one week only going essentially silent, airing a total of 80 ads in 4 states (not 80,000 ads, just 80 ads) of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Now he's up in all the states in the list adding Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin.
As the post-Convention bounce wore off, Hillary's edge in polling shrunk and the team went back to advertising in several states they left including Nevada and Colorado. They have not felt worried about Virginia. Trump has been all over the place, some weeks running ads in a dozen states, other weeks in only a handful. Trump promised a big TV ad campaign for September which didn't materialize, only about half was actually bought. Now he promised 140 million dollar ad blitz for October (and would be about 17 million dollars per week of TV ads from when this was promised) but currently Trump actually only pays for 7.5 million dollars of TV ads per week. He seems to like to claim he does more than he actually does (sounds, ..Trumpian). Brooklyn has started to run Spanish-language ads including a rush radio ad capitalizing on Trump's Cuba Castro connection (runs in English and Spanish on theme of the two faces of Trump) while in many states the revelation of not paying taxes was released as a TV ad and its running for example in Ohio. Trump is trying to fix damage to his female vote, by running an Ivanka ad that almost seems more like a PR ad for her, than a political ad for her dad. No doubt the family members were overriding TV ad experts on what kind of ad would help win votes.
As to 'saving' the campaign on a miraculous victory? That would require saturation of TV airwaves - and it makes things worse that early voting has already started, so if Trump can't do this now it will soon be too late. But if anyone is winning the TV ad wars, its again, team Clinton.
THIRD PARTIES
The two main third party candidates, Gary Johnson the Republican ex-Governor of New Mexico running on the Libertarian ticket, and Dr Jill Stein running on the Green Party ticket are seeing slow erosion of their initial popularity. They have peaked. Neither made it to the debates and now they are only spoilers to the final elecition and protest candidates who have no chance of winning the election. Meanwhile Republican Ewan McMullin the ex-CIA man who runs as a 'third party Republican' has gotten on some ballots including his home state of Utah. His polling nationally won't matter but he may win his home state and deny Utah's 6 EV votes from Trump only making Trump's election chances much worse.
OUTSIDE EFFECTS
The race is not just the candidates, the issues and the Campaigns. Also the race can be impacted by outside effects, and in this cycle, especially any ISIS related terrorism. So lets look at the outside effects and how they are in play now at the start of September. Note there is no change from last month, but Putin and Russia may become an issue, there are troop movements at the Ukrainian border. With Trump's previous campaign boss Paul Manafort's close ties to Putin, this could be particularly damaging development for Trump. But as of now, the outside effects have the same impact as a month ago.
OUTSIDE ISSUE SCORES
HILLARY CLINTON . . . . . . . . . . DONALD TRUMP
8 Year Cycle . . . . . . C . . . . . . . . . . 8 Year Cycle . . . . . . A
Obama approval . . . A . . . . . . . . . . Obama approval . . . C
Economy . . . . . . . . . A . . . . . . . . . . Economy . . . . . . . . . B
Terrorism . . . . . . . . . B . . . . . . . . . . Terrorism . . . . . . . . . A
The 8 year cycle is a strong force that makes most elections swing from one party to the rival every 8 years. Since WW2, only twice that cycle was broken - by Carter losing his re-election in 1980 and by Daddy Bush extending a third term after popular Reagan. But while this is a strong cycle, it is not a perfect cycle. It can be beaten. I thus give Trump the A and Hillary the C on this scale. I will not be adjusting this grading. It is something which is in play, which favors Trump but will not change. The incumbent President’s approval rating is a significant factor in that candidate’s or his/her party’s success in the election. When Reagan was popular, he got his successor Daddy Bush elected inspite of the 8 year cycle in 1988. When Bill Clinton was not as popular, he was not able to get Al Gore to do the same in 2000. Unpopular W Bush was not able to get John McCain elected in 2008. And unpopular Jimmy Carter and unpopular Daddy Bush both lost their re-elections. Obama is the most popular incumbent by July of his eight year and this is helping Hillary. I rate it the same effect as the 8 year cycle but in opposing direction, so they cancel each other out. Of the outside environmental factors, the economy is ok but not great. That favors Hillary but only slightly (hence Trump gets the B). Meanwhile terrorism is a concern but most of it is abroad still so right now, its not dominating the news, hence Trump gains but only modestly right now (hence Hillary gets the B). These two also cancel each other out for the start of August. We’ll see how that goes into the coming months. Also note, any new issue may emerge, a natural disaster, a foreign policy crisis (Putin, North Korea, etc) or a worldwide economic crisis or something like that. Any such matter will be added to the outside effects if such item emerges.
VOTERS
I want to mention a few items of voter preferences. The 2016 season will feature the most extreme demographic divisions in voter support ever seen. The gender gap has been about 10% in the recent years for Democrats, but the reason why this is even more damaging is that there are more women than men, and women are more registered than me, and women vote more than men. In the past few elections, women have been 6% more of the final electorate than men. This year the female vote will surge because for the first time in history, American women can vote for a woman on the top of the ticket. Many ‘lazy’ voters will show up specifically among women, so the total female vote will surge. Even if it surges by only about 10% over its normal amount, that would mean women will have an 11% gap in their NUMBERS over men. That's before we consider a gender GAP among voters, which will also be larger for Hillary against Trump than any recent gender gap ever measured. A Pew survey across various demographics in June found Hillary up by 16% over Trump in the gender gap among female voters.
Among minorities the race is even worse. The Mitt Romney ‘autopsy’ after the 2012 election loss, conducted by the Republican party said the Republicans must improve their standing with women, with the youth voters, with blacks and with Hispanics (they did not; in the interim years, the party has taken positions consistently against all of those groups while the Democrats have taken positions defending those groups). In Trump the Republicans nominated the candidate with the worst reputation among all four groups. Against him, the Democrats nominated their candidate on their side who was best on three of the four demographics (Bernie being better among youth). The Republicans clearly studied what went wrong in 2012, and what they had to do to prevent another election loss. Then they went and did the exact opposite. It seems like the Republicans picked Trump expressly to have an even more disastrous election loss in 2016, than they had in 2012. So lets study. In the Hispanic vote, Romney’s ‘self-deportation’ statement sunk his chances and he scored the worst Hispanic support of any nominee as far as Exit Polls have been conducted. Romney only got 27% of the Hispanic vote (McCain got 31% four years prior). The Republican autopsy said in 2016 the Republican nominee will not win the White House unless the party gets 40% of the Hispanic vote. The latest mid September poll by Univision of four battleground states with high Hispanic voters (Nevada, Florida, Colorado and Arizona) found that Trump polls one quarter WORSE than Trump. So if Trump got about 27% nationally, that means he'd get maybe 19% or 20% now. This was obviously before the debate which damaged him more. Trump is the single most disliked politician by Hispanics ever measured.
How about the blacks? Against the first-ever black Presidential candidate, its perhaps not fair to consider how badly Romney did (6%) or McCain (4%). But now that Obama is no longer on the ticket, and its two whites against each other, perhaps Trump can do better. Or perhaps not. After Trump's black outreach attempts in Detroit, his polling among black voters in the city. Is at 0%. Yes. Zero percent. Nationally Trump scores in low single digits, anywhere from 1% to 5% and will end up with less black votes than Romney. Black voters can sense the inherent racist and KKK lover in Trump and his 'Deplorables' and truly fear his candidacy. Trump is only aiming for white male voters. And less-educated ones at that. The typical Fox viewer. The single best metric to identify a Trump voter is ‘do you believe Obama was born in Kenya’. Those who believe this myth, they are Trump voters; and those who know he was not, they are Hillary voters. Its the single easiest measure of the two rivals. The informed intelligent better-educated voter is for Hillary. All demographics except white men, are for Hillary. And even among white men, the Trump voter skews to the least educated blue collar Fox viewer.
The initial Campaigns on both sides play true to form. Trump feuded with a judge who is a US born American but whose parents came from Mexico. Trump’s supporters and speakers at their Convention claimed Black Lives Matter to be a terrorist organization. Trump paraded a series of politicians hated by women and the youth. Trump started a new feud with Muslim parents of a fallen war hero. The American Nazis, KKK and White Supremacists all celebrated the themes and speakers and positions of the GOP convention. Meanwhile the Democrats featured a rainbow of speakers of every demographics, took the position to give amnesty to undocumented Hispanics, supported Black Lives Matter and parents of blacks killed by cops, and featured women after women including leaders such as Cecile Richard of Planned Parenthood in a key speaking slot. If the Republicans really continue on this mad demographic strategy, it is exactly as Republican Senator Lindsay Graham said, there are not enough old white angry men to get anyone elected.
In the past month Trump has now managed to add a white supremacists (Bannon) from Breitbart to his team. Last month Trump ended his Birtherism against Obama but then said he only did it because he didn't want to take any questions, and of course he is not apologizing. At the debate Trump spent 12 minutes dancing around 'stop-and-frisk' a racist policing method that was ruled unconstitutional and which all minorities hate. Trump is not playing well with minorities. Then on the gender gap, Roger Ailes is accused of sexual harassment by 20 women who worked for him (he was fired for that issue at Fox News). Meanwhile Bannon was himself involved in domestic abuse, and Conway has said dumb things about women too, especially about rape. (Republicans should be taught never to mention that word, didn't they learn the lesson with Todd Akin). Trump doubled down on all this with his fresh defense of his vulgar language at the end of the debate, and then going on his tirades about Alicia Machado. Coming shortly, Trump's own rape trial of a 13 year old girl. And if he hadn't gotten to offending overweight voters, yes, that box has now also been ticked. So yes Trump is still digging himself further into that demographic hole from which victory is not possible.
ELECTORAL MAP
ELECTORAL COLLEGE STATUS (RCP):
322 Clinton vs 216 Trump on Aug 31 'No Tossups' map on RCP (was 363 C vs 176 T on Aug 31, was 322 C vs 216 T on July 31):
Hillary Clinton leads RCP average of polling in: CO, FL, GA, NV, NH, NM, NC, PA, VA, WI
Donald Trump leads polling in: AZ, IA, OH
Since Aug 31, Trump picked up leads in Iowa and Ohio
TV AD WAR
Campaigns or SuperPACs have ads on TV in:
Hillary Clinton TV ads on air at start of October in AZ, CO, FL, IA, NB, NV, NH, NC, OH, PA
Donald Trump TV ads on air at start of October in: CO, FL, IA, ME, MI, NV, NH, NC, OH, PA, VA, WI
(Bolding indicates states where both campaigns are on the air)
Hillary Clinton aired 75,300 TV ads paying $61.7M for them in the 4 weeks ending Sept 24
Donald Trump aired 19,700 TV ads paying $15.2M for them in the 4 weeks ending Sept 24
Since July, Hillary has taken returned with ads in Colorado and added Arizona and Nebraska. She ran ads for 1 week in Georgia. Trump has run off-and-on TV ads, one week only going essentially silent, airing a total of 80 ads in 4 states (not 80,000 ads, just 80 ads) of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Now he's up in all the states in the list adding Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin.
In May Trump was promising a silly map that he would put California in play and he’d do well in New York and New Jersey etc. Trump wasted 3 weeks in California (the state hated him so much, the polls moved AGAINST him). One of Trump’s few new hires in June was a pollster for New York. In July Trump met with the Congressional Republican caucus in a closed-door meeting where he showed his map - it didn’t have California or New York of course. But it had 17 states including wildly optimistic target states that have’t voted Republican in ages like Minnesota and Michigan. That map then has shifted essentially every week and Trump still continues to campaign in states that he has no chance of winning (wasting valuable time). The real race is down to 7 states: Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Hillary Clinton leads currently in the local polling in 5 of those states. Trump's easiest path is to win Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina to become President (while not losing any state that Romney carried, such as Arizona, Georgia or yes, indeed Utah). If Trump loses one of those (Pennsylvania) then he has to win in at least 2 of the remaining 3 states for his alternate map.
BATTLEGROUND STATES (bolded is side who leads) (TV Ads run last 30 days through Sept 15)
State . . . . . . . . . EV Votes . . . . RCP Polling . . . . TV ads run in Sept . . . . . . . . Offices
Florida . . . . . . . . 29 . . . . . . . . . 2.8% H . . . . . . . . 11,000 H / 5,600 T . . . . . . . . . 65 H / 60 T
Pennsylvania . . . 20 . . . . . . . . . 2.1% H . . . . . . . . . 5,500 H / 2,500 T . . . . . . . . 38 H / 2 T
Ohio . . . . . . . . . . 19 . . . . . . . . . 3.8% T . . . . . . . . . 8,700 H / 4,900 T . . . . . . . . . 60 H / 16 T
North Carolina . . 15 . . . . . . . . . 1.8% H . . . . . . . . . 9,500 H / 3,400 T . . . . . . . . . 30 H / 1 T
Colorado . . . . . . 10 . . . . . . . . . 1.8% H . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 H / . . . 0 T . . . . . . . . . 33 H / 22 T
Iowa . . . . . . . . . . . 6 . . . . . . . . . 5.0% T . . . . . . . . . 3,300 H / . 700 T . . . . . . . . . 24 H / 9 T
Nevada . . . . . . . . 6 . . . . . . . . . 0.2% H . . . . . . . . . 4,000 H / . 800 T . . . . . . . . . . 7 H / 7 T
(Note: Trump campaign has outsourced the ground game to the Republican party so the office numbers may be off by undercounting GOP offices)
The US Presidential election is not one national vote, even though it will be simplified often to just count the total vote. It is 51 separate simultaneous elections in each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. Based on the size of the state, each is awarded a count of 'Electoral College' votes, so with 29 EV votes out of Florida, that state is worth nearly 5 times as much as to win Nevada with 6 EV votes. The magic number is 270 EV votes. Most states are not 'in play' so Alabama and Kansas are reliably Republican states while Massachussetts and Oregon are reliably Democratic states. Neither side bothers to go campaign in those states, because their election result is already known. The race each year boils down to about a dozen or so 'battleground' states. That map is then 'shrunk' as both sides start to abandon states they don't think they can win or states they think they already have won. And if one side is feeling very confident, they can add new states towards the end, to pick up more victories, such as President Obama did in 2008 when he fought till the last day to win a narrow victory out of Indiana, an usually Republican state but next door to his home state of Illinois. It was such a hard-won victory, that in 2012 when Obama had a harder fight, he didn't bother to try to win Indiana again.
We now know what the final 7 states are, that will decide the election. It is that list above, or Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Colorado. Trump will try to claim Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire and Virginia are also in play - they are not, as Hillary isn't bothered to run TV ads there. The polling in each of those states is quite strong for Hillary, far far past the level that could be reversed in intense campaigning. Practically from a mathematical point of view, Trump has to run the four large states, he has to win each of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina. Obama won all of them in 2008 and all but NC in 2012. Hillary is ahead in polling in three of the four states excepting Ohio. If Trump loses one of them (likeliest Pennsylvania) then he'd have to win at least two of Iowa, Colorado and/or Nevada to replace it. (Plus Trump cannot lose any other states that Hillary may contest for, like Arizona or Georgia).
That above table tells how tough Trump's last 35 days are. He is behind in field offices in all of the 7 states except Nevada where the two sides are tied. In TV ads, Hillary is also ahead all of the 7. But in Florida Hillary has 34 field offices while Trump has.. one. In North Carolina Trump has yet to open the first field office while Hillary has 30. In the TV ad wars, Trump has clawed back some of the overwhelming advantage Hillary had and now runs roughly at a 2 to 1 disadvantage (Was 3 to 1 in August) For Trump to have any realistic chance to overcome any challenges, he has to do something better than Hillary. And at this point, that happens truly nowhere.
The Candidate's Time is the most valuable resource. Its the only asset for which more cannot be generated. A Campaign may send a surrogate but its never the same. And the Candidate's Time is the best measure of the priorities of the Campaign. A Candidate should only be seen doing 3 things - events in battleground states, fund-raising, and selected TV appearances that enhance the campaign. Hillary Clinton's campaign is textbook of how it should be done. Donald Trump is typically undisciplined and even counter-productive. Like just now he went suddenly and spontaneously to Mexico. No EV votes from Mexico. It was such a sudden decision they didn't even arrange a press pool of US media to join Trump. A political disaster and a waste of time. Trump has finally stopped his bizarre campaigning in very red or very blue states but still wastes time in states he cannot win such as just campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan. Meanwhile Hillary and her vast array of surrogates are flooding the battleground states with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, President Obama, Michelle Obama and Joe Biden all on the trail for Hillary. President Obama has said he'd do 2 days per week in the last month and that would be an unprecedentedly heavy campaign schedule for a sitting President to support his successor, in the modern era.
RACE COMMENTARY: SEPTEMBER
September politics got ever hotter culminating to the end with the debates. Trump fired his previous Campaign Manager (Paul Manafort) and took on KellyAnne Conway (a pollster/analyst and political pundit who has never run a campaign before) who then got as her boss, Stephen Bannon from Breitbart website, a far-right neo-Nazi (now preferring to be called the 'Alt-Right') news service. While Conway put Trump on a Teleprompter, she also got Trump to tone down some of his rhetoric and to do some attempts to portray a kinder-gentler Trump. Trump among other things, announced he no longer thinks Obama was born in Kenya. Although he refused to apologize for 5 years of hounding the President on this. But against a softer (still daily nutty) tone, Trump then resorted to several attempts at a radical shake-up of the race to get back into the game. He tried a sudden Mexican trip. He then tried to appeal to black voters (by speaking to lily-white audiences and promising heavy policing and stop-and-frisk). Then Trump went to Detroit and visited a black church where he was reprimanded for turning his visit into a political event and was interrupted. None of these gimmicks changed the trajectory of the race. Then came the debate.
The debate was a total disaster for Trump. Hillary was calm, collected, smart, witty, fully prepared, remained at ease, at times laughed and took continuous stabs at Trump which got under his skin ever more during the 90 minutes. Trump appeared ever more childish towards the end and disqualified himself with many moderate undecided voters who tuned in to the most-watched TV debate in history (84 million live on TV networks, millions more online). Trump severely damaged himself in the debate admitting he doesn't pay taxes, he feuded with the moderator twice on issues where any sane viewer sees Trump is lying (whether he was for the Iraq war 'Call Sean Hannity, why isn't anybody calling Sean Hannity'; and the legality of stop-and-frisk). Trump burned himself badly with black voters in the racial segment of the debate and likely with Hispanics too. Then at the end Hillary baited Trump to rant about women. In a bizarre aftermath, immediately after the debate Trump picked a fight with a former Miss Universe, accusing her of gaining weight - and kept that fight at the top of the news for 4 days! Trump also resorted to the tried-and-true method of snatching victory from debate defeat, by blaming a faulty microphone. When every viewer heard every word - and indeed the BREATHING of what may have been a runny nose if not a Cocaine nose.
As the month ended, the negative stories in the news started to break against Trump. Many journalists had likely been prepping these stories for running before election day and one found that Trump had illegally been dealing with Cuba and Fidel Castro when this was illegal. Hillary already cut a Spanish-language radio ad accusing Trump of being two-faced. A story broke with one year of Trump's tax returns. He paid no taxes for 18 years and in the year 1995 managed to report a tax loss of 916 million dollars. Trump's surrogates were trying to spin that as business 'brilliance' and that Trump is a genius for not paying taxes. A story broke that Trump had been dealing with Iranian banks. Another that Trump's recent skyscrapers had been built with steel from China. Likely such stories will populate the press most days till election day but for a Presdential candidate, it was one of the worst weeks ever, probably on par with Jimmy Carter's failing hostage rescue mission, for the total political damage now done to Trump.
If you want to read my analysis of how the debate was won & lost, a blow-by-blow insider view to what happened, written by yes, an ex-professional debate coach, see this blog for the details and tricks and methods.
MY FORECAST (REVISED FROM AUGUST)
I have just updated and revised my forecast from August. As of today I feel we have enough information to see how the remaining five weeks will go, in a general sense. Trump has passed 'Peak Trump' polling support which was 41.5%. He is down to 40.5% now and on his way gradually down. He will end with pretty close to exactly 40% in polling on the weekend before Election Day.
Trump's supporters are loyal, they will not desert him. But his mad campaign has scared all prospective moderate voters away, meaning Trump has a high floor but low ceiling (they essentially merge) and he cannot break get past 40% by election day. However, while Trump can't get past 40%, Hillary will not collect the other 60% partly as she is so unpopular herself, but mostly because of the third party candidates. Hillary is sitting at about 45% certain support and the last 15% is what will be determined in the last five week. About 6% of the electorate is undecided. Johnson has peaked with his support at 13% in early August. Stein had peaked her support nearly at 5% in July. They are now around 7% and 2.5% but coming down. McMullin is the new shiny object and in those states where he is on the ballot some non-Trump supporters are sampling McMullen now. By election day their respective polling will settle at 6% for Johnson, 2% for Stein and 1% for McMullin and others. As practically none of the undecided voters are willing to accept Trump, they will need to go to Hillary, Johnson, Stein or possibly McMullin. They will mostly go roughly by their respective polling ratio, meaning Hillary will take the lion's share.
I expect the last weekend (through Monday) polls to have about 3% remaining in undecideds, and the decided vote to poll at 48% for Hillary, 40% for Trump, 6% for Johnson, 2% for Stein and 1% for McMullin and others. The actual vote, however, will then be driven by the GOTV effort, which is formidable with Hillary, scant with Trump and no-existent for the others. Thus the final election night count will adjust for Hillary thus that she ends with 52%, Trump 39%, Johnson 6%, Stein 2% and McMullin and others 1% (and obviously nobody remains undecided). I make that at 422 EV votes for Hillary and 110 EV votes for Trump. I am calling Utah for McMullin with its 6 EV votes. Trump wins 18 states, Hillary 31 states and DC. I also forecast that the Democrats will use this election landslide of 13 points to flip the Senate and win 53 seats to the Republicans 47. I do not anticipate the Democrats to capture the House, I think they'll fall 5 seats short. If you'd like to read the full analysis and reasoning, please read my updated forecast of Oct 4, 2016.
This is my Oct 4, 2016 update to my measurement of the race of the General Election of 2016. I will revisit monthly. And before you laugh too hard about how this forecast went, please remember, I was among the first in the world, in August of last year, to say Trump can win his nomination (I calculated the primary math here, you won't find many who said in August Trump could win) and I predicted the Trump primary victory in January, before any state had voted, so accurately, I had the top 3 finishers in the race AND the right sequence AND I had the number of states Trump would win, off by only 1. My GOP forecast even pinpointed correctly the dates when his rivals would be eliminated and the date Trump would clinch. As to Presidential elections, I got the 2012 election so precisely, I was off by one state. (That's exactly as accurate as the legendary Nate Silver of 538 blog). And I predicted most of this year's election (as seen so far, including issues such as Obama's rise in popularity and Hillary Clinton's huge fund-raising edge) as far back as October of 2014. But I will also keep you abreast of where my thinking goes. As we learn more about this race, I will also discuss any changes to my forecast. Currently? 18 point landslide election drubbing. Hillary wins 36 states and territories; gets 448 electoral college votes, where Trump wins 15 and gets only 90. Stay tunes and stock up on your popcorn. Also note, we have a very smart discussion panel here among my readers, so please do also engage with us in the comments.
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