I think Trump really needs to lose by double digits for me to have faith in this country. Not only that, but a shellacking in battleground states also will lead to Republican Senators getting booted, which needs to happen as well. I want a 7-9 seat pickup in the Senate and I want the House to be in play.
This poll is a little concerning, I’m not going to lie. Clinton is slipping.
But what has happened? How has she done anything that warrants a slip? She’s done nothing wrong. This continues to be fallout from that disastrous primary in which she loses a significant portion of her natural base to utter sociopaths.
Take a look at their November 2012 and November 2008 numbers. Pew Poll has always been kind of woggly. They cast a wide net, the better to gauge temperature and pulse and mood kinds of stuff, but not so good at dialing into the precise state of the presidential race. Great job of predicting the winner, not so hot at really hitting the margin.
The point is when the national poll gap hits 6% you can stop worrying about the Electoral College.
I’m hopeful, and this is probably naive, that if we have the Senate (and obviously ideally the House) that the GOP will be busy fighting its open civil war and won’t be able to mount anything near as effective an opposition as McConnell/Boehner/Ryan did.
I don’t know. Certainly hasn’t done anything in my eyes to warrant a slip. But recent national polls seem to show she’s slipping. I can’t fathom how Donald Trump could only be down 4.
Nate Silver did a piece on this - suggesting Clinton was steady, what was happening was live operator polls are in a cycle and we are now getting more “internet” or add tracking polls (like the USC junk poll) which have always looked worse for Clinton.
I happen to think Nate is 100% correct, what has changed is the lean of the specific polls, not the actual state of the race.
This is a quality poll, but as I have noted, the modeling of the electorate (73% white) is off IMHO. There is also some natural variation on sampling.
Piece is here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-clintons-lead-is-clear-and-steady/
What does this story have to do with Bernie?
On the point of the USC poll, as has been discussed on other threads, it is a trending poll of the same people every week, which appeared to start with a very poor draw of Hillary voters. I don’t think that they publish their cross-tabs, which would be interesting. Also, for what it is worth, the participants in that poll are paid for their participation in the USC poll. I think that they do that to try to keep up with their trends of the same people, but it still strikes me as off.
My understanding is that they built their sample by asking people who they voted for in 2012. They then got a 51 to 47 or so split. However, as someone pointed out (can’t recall where) self reporting of votes later tends to skew towards the winner. I.e. people who voted for Romney would answer they voted for Obama. Not that many, but enough to totally mess up the sample.
There are other methodological issues. I think it works to show shifts in the election (the USC sample has moved similarly to the polls in Clinton’s favor) but not the top line state of the race.
I don’t think that’s even remotely naive. That’s why I believe she needs to run up the scoreboard. She needs to win by such a large margin that the establishment Republicans are furiously trying to oust the crazies and the crazies will be blaming the establishment. If the election is close, the establishment can claim they tried and the crazies won’t be able to argue that their candidate was abandoned. We Democrats need for it to be a blowout that necessitates the RNC to flee Trump so that there will be intense bad blood among the two rival factions. The last thing we need is for them to return calling it a push.
Because he’s the very reason why the Democratic primary got so unnecessarily nasty. He created much of this mess.
To the Hillary fans–this is why I hoped Bernie would be the nominee; he’s “new”, he’d be leading the GoOPer by a lot more, as indeed he was throughout the primaries.
To the Bernie or Busters–get with the Hillary campaign. She’s Bill’s better half, she’s the progressive half of that relationship, she’s very close to Bernie on policy, and she’s running on the best platform the Dems have put together since the New Deal era. If you want a mandate for progressive politics, vote for Hillary and vote Dem downballot. You withhold your vote or send it somewhere else? Things move back to the right again. That’s how Washington DC works; the rank-and-file politicians who take their cue from how big a margin the presidential candidate gets always go for the easiest-to-get next vote, and if the “base” thumbs their nose, they turn to the “center.” Which means the right. You don’t want that.
Agreed. If you read their background materials, they say that tracking changing opinions over time is the primary purpose of their survey, and, though they do not make the direct leap themselves, I think it is not necessarily value in the raw numbers themselves - more the trend line. But, that is not how their poll results are being used here and elsewhere.