Presidential election minus 12 weeks

With less than three months to go before the final reckoning, here’s a poll aggregate and a venue for discussion of matters American.

A place for discussion of the particularly diverting presidential election campaign under way in the United States. There are of course a great many forecasters and poll aggregators whose authority you might well judge higher than my own, but if for no other reason than personal amusement, I present the following aggregation of all the national polling recorded at HuffPost Pollster. This involved calculating bias adjustments, applying crude weightings to pollsters based on experience and performance, determining an “others” trend from such data as was available for that, and then determining trends for the major candidates’ shares of the non-others vote. The current reading has Hillary Clinton on 47.7% and Donald Trump on 38.5%, which is slightly less favourable for Trump than the HuffPost Pollster aggregate and correspondingly better for “others”.

2016-08-14-ustrack

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

56 comments on “Presidential election minus 12 weeks”

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  1. Thankyou WB.

    Seems to me Trumps figures slumped immediately after the GoP convention when he was supposed to moderate and present in a more ‘Presidential’ style, but didn’t.

    I’m almost convinced Trump doesn’t want to win and Hillary will cruise into the OO.

  2. William, 538 also has Trump polling about 37.7% compared with Clinton on 44.3% (Huff is @ 47.7% above). Do we know if any candidate in Trump’s position has managed to make up enough ground to win at this point in the campaign cycle?

  3. This involved calculating bias adjustments, applying crude weightings to pollsters based on experience and performance, determining an “others” trend from such data as was available for that, and then determining trends for the major candidates’ shares of the non-others vote.

    and you loved ever second of it didn’t you?

  4. Briefly, I think the FiveThirtyEight thing you’re invoking might have an undecided component, unlike mine. If you fish around they’ve also got a “who’s winning the popular vote” model more analogous to what I’m doing, which has Clinton on 49.0% and Trump on 41.2%. I suspect the more experienced modellers would tell you that I haven’t redressed a tendency for “others” to come in too high.

  5. briefly @ #2 Sunday, August 14, 2016 at 7:49 pm

    William, 538 also has Drumpf polling about 37.7% compared with Clinton on 44.3% (Huff is @ 47.7% above). Do we know if any candidate in Drumpf’s position has managed to make up enough ground to win at this point in the campaign cycle?

    The only candidate I can think of is George H. W. Bush in the 1988 election.

  7. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about the extent of Al Gore’s comeback to win the popular vote in 2000. I can’t find a decent poll aggregate, but I’m seeing a lot of polls that showed Bush with double-digit leads in early August, immediately after the Republican convention.

  8. william bowe @ #7 Sunday, August 14, 2016 at 8:10 pm

    I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about the extent of Al Gore’s comeback to win the popular vote in 2000. I can’t find a decent poll aggregate, but I’m seeing a lot of polls that showed Bush with double-digit leads in early August, immediately after the Republican convention.

    William, wouldn’t those polls be affected by the presence Bush’s convention polling bounce and Gore yet to receive one? (The 2000 DNC wasn’t until mid-August.)

  9. Millennial, William…thanks. The tide does seem to be running very strongly away from Trump….not easy to see how he can slow and then reverse it.

  10. Some links on the election that may interest you all

    Utah’s Republican lieutenant governor says, barring huge changes, he won’t vote for Donald Trump
    http://www.sltrib.com/news/4232246-155/utahs-lieutenant-governor-says-barring-huge

    Trump recruits ‘election observers’ as he warns of potential voter fraud
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/13/trump-recruits-election-observers-voter-intimidation-fears
    What could go wrong?

    Secret Trump voters reverse their support: ‘He seems to be insane’
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/12/secret-donald-trump-supporters-change-vote-election
    A follow up to their article from February, which got a bit of attention at the time

    Dem senators to Clinton: Stick with Garland
    Renominating the judge could help Clinton preserve valuable political capital if she wins the presidency.
    http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/hillary-clinton-merrick-garland-nomination-226967

  12. What I’d like to know here is how badly Trump would have to do in order for the Democrats to win the Congress, and (harder) to win again in the mid terms.

  13. Trump’s slump after the GOP convention and the media around it remind me of how Turnbull was expected to grow into the job. The difference is the US media have gotten sick of Trump faster while our media are still hanging on.

  15. My prediction has always been that Trump stood at least an even chance of winning the GOP nomination, and no chance at all of winning a general election. I’m happy to stand by that. The interesting part will be what happens in the House and Senate. The Dems retaking both would be a major upset, however seems a bit unlikely even with Trump. The Senate seems like a real possibility, however.

  16. The Hilary Clinton campaign are winding back advertising in Virginia and Colorado. This is a bad sign for Donald Trump, because it’s a sign the Democrats are confident of holding those states even when their considered swing states.

    North Carolina is looking like a likely pick up for the Democrats and what’s even more concerning for the Republicans is the Clinton campaign sending out field organizers campaigning in Arizona and Georgia. Arizona and Georgia didn’t even fall to the Democrats in the landslide Obama win in 2008.

    Swing states of Iowa, Ohio, and Florida are also firmly in the Democrats column.

  17. Trump seems to be hanging on grimly in Iowa and it’s fairly tight in Ohio and Florida in some polls.

    He’s well ahead in redneck states.

  21. The No-Pivot Election: Clinton and Trump Make No Policy Concessions
    http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-08-15/the-no-pivot-election-clinton-and-trump-make-no-policy-concessions

    Maureen Dowd Is A National Embarrassment
    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/08/maureen-dowd-is-a-national-embarrassment

    How We Killed the Tea Party
    Greedy super PACs drained the movement with endless pleas for money to support “conservative” candidates—while instead using the money to enrich themselves. I should know. I worked for one of them
    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/tea-party-pacs-ideas-death-214164

    You Let Them Call You Traitor
    https://first-draft.com/2016/08/14/you-let-them-call-you-traitor/
    “As with so many things that only seem new because Cheeto Jesus does them louder, inciting anger against reporters has always been okay to the GOP. And I hate to break this to reporters, but it’s been okay to many of their bosses, too. The biggest enablers and normalizers of anti-media rhetoric are assignment editors, executive producers and corporate owners.”

  24. People have come back from greater deficits and win, but never this late in the game.

    Basic rule is, particularly in the recent two decades, whomever is ahead within the first 2-4 weeks after the convention is usually the one who wins. Bush trailed Dukakis by about 17%, but by the time the conventions were finished Bush got the lead and never lost it. Gore had been trailing Bush pretty badly, but he got a decent bounce out of his convention, but Bush II by this point in 2000 had a TINY aggregated lead.

    Long story short – leader 2-4 weeks after the conventions – Reagan x2, Bush I, Clinton x2, Bush II x 2, Obama x2. You will get variants that mean polls tighten (see the first debates in 2004 and 2012) but it’s a pretty good bet.

  27. Toorak Toff @ #17 Monday, August 15, 2016 at 3:02 pm

    Drumpf seems to be hanging on grimly in Iowa and it’s fairly tight in Ohio and Florida in some polls.
    He’s well ahead in redneck states.

    The problem for Trump though is that even if that he won all of the Red States Mitt Romney won in 2012 (even though he’s currently greatly under-preforming in Red States relative to Romney’s performance) and somehow won Florida, Ohio and Iowa (all of which he’s trailing Clinton by about 6 points or more); it would still not be enough to win – he’d have to win either Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia or Colorado; and Clinton is winning those states by about 9 points each.

  29. trumps campaign has the fetid stench of howard permeating it.

    his latest that hillary doesnt have the ticker for it is straight from the howard playbook.
    add the dog whistling against muslims, gays and immigrants and the love of coal, the democrat presidents being the friends of terrorists and its the skid mark all over again.

    howards son still working for the republicans?

  30. The absence of preferential voting and the fact it isn’t compulsory to vote makes US elections a very different beast to those in Australia. The GOP is widely seen to have seized the Senate in 2014 on the back of poor turnout rather than a genuine shift in support to the Republicans. Due to a higher Democrat party affiliation and a growth in traditional Democrat demographics (Hispanics, African Americans) relative to the GOP base (whites, evangelicals, the ultra elite), you often see Democrat efforts about energising the base and getting out the vote, and when they succeed they tend to win. Unsurprisingly, GOP tactics in many states have included attempts to tighten voter registration laws in very specific ways that tend to disenfranchise Democrat voters, reduce voting stations in Democrat areas, and gerrymandering (which only works in the House).

    For this election, the Presidential outlook is looking very dire for Trump – though not unwinnable. If his polls don’t turn around by the end of this week then he will need to overcome a 60-70 year trend of late August polling versus electoral outcome in order to win the popular vote. Al Gore was winning in the polls at this time and won the popular vote in 2000, albeit narrowly losing the election after the SCOTUS ruling in Florida.

    Trump’s path needs to take him to 270 votes, and – realistically – the only states he is even remotely in the running for at the moment include NH, NC, FL, IA, OH and NV. If he takes all of these plus AZ and GA he gets 269 – a tie. That means he not only needs to overcome Clinton-positive polling in every single one of these states, but he also needs to push at least one other state into his column. CO and VA are only being dubbed swing by the most conservative of pollsters, and PA is polling double digits blue in some areas.

    Meanwhile, to add to his nightmare, some outliers are showing SC – not blue since 1976 – in danger of turning, and AZ and GA under current polling would both potentially flip as well.

    Of course, states don’t tend to all go on their own coin tosses. If one state tends starts to turn, the others generally will. In Trump’s best polling (between the GOP and Democrat conventions), NH, NV, OH, FL and IA were polling slightly in favour of Trump with PA only just hanging on and NC firmly red. They all swung to Clinton after the Democrat convention.

    Give it a week. If Trump doesn’t turn it around at least a little then – assuming that he remains the candidate and nothing else extraordinary changes, he’s finished, and quite possibly by a landslide.

  31. All those Bernie admirers are flocking to Hillary.

    Of course they are. Bernie is to the left of Hillary, and Hillary is to the left of Trump. There was never any chance that Bernie supporters would flock to Trump. Anyone who thought otherwise was fooling themselves. At best some of them might have gone to third-party candidates (and probably some have), but the vast majority will be voting for Clinton. Going to Trump instead would be hugely irrational.

  32. I think that Bernie supporters flocking back to Hillary was always going to happen as soon as they negotiated a post nomination deal. That is not the main issue we see in these polls. The issue is the sheer number of large demographics that Trump has offended. That will surely be his undoing. Losing states like Florida after offending the Latino vote is obvious. But there are lots more. For example after insulting veterans he is pretty unlikely to win middle states like Virginia. Hillary is not winning this. (She is actually saying very little right now.). Trump is losing it.

    The other factor in Clinton’s favour is Obama. He is leaving the US economy in far better shape than he inherited it in, and that should Clinton her a lot. It plays to her strengths, and limits voter resentment, whereas Trump is stoking a fear of himself being in charge. That fear will mobilise the democrat vote too. There is a clear reason to vote this time – stop a racist idiot becoming President.

  35. Don’t know everyone’s so pessimistic about Trump’s chances. In the latest Spectator (13 August), there’s an article by Christopher Caldwell who thinks that despite the efforts of the media to bring him down , Trump ought to win because “he is genuinely funny. If elected he would be the first president since John F. Kennedy to possess a sense of humour.”

    Caldwell says: “The road to the presidency for Trump is a narrow one. He does lag in the polls. He lacks experience and savvy electoral and policy personnel. But he ought to win it. He need take only Ohio and Pennsylvania away from Hillary Clinton.”

    So there! Don’t be so,sure it’s all over.

  37. Usually about a month after the conventions are done (and the dust has settled) do you finally start having a fair picture of what the nature of the race is. Although normally the conventions are not until mid-late August/early September, so there is more time for things to change. I definitely would not get complacent if I were the Democrats (moreso because turnout is important and feeling like they “have it in the bag” might cause voters to stay at home because they are not needed, causing the tortoise to overtake the hare.)

    However, at this point, the fact that we’re talking about places like Georgia and Arizona being competitive is a troubling sign for Trump.

  38. I hereby predict that Trump will find a way to withdraw from the race. It’s all over. I don’t think even a major terrorist attack on American soil would do anything to save Trump. Many Americans now have grave doubts about his mental stability, temperament, even his sanity (as Bloomberg alluded to in his speech). So a terrorist attack would just cause mainstream Americans to be even more likely to vote for the candidate who would represent a steady hand.

    Why would Trump withdraw? He is no fool, and he is already indicating that he may be expecting to lose – his references to the election being “rigged” and so forth – but at some point he will understand that he might well suffer the worst defeat in modern history next to Reagan’s 1984 defeat of Mondale.

    I believe Trump’s psychological wiring is such that he would not allow the Trump brand, that he has so carefully burnished over the years, to be diminished by the utter humiliation of being walloped by Clinton. He would make a calculation that while bowing out would carry some loss of face – that would pale in comparison with a Nov 8 annihilation, which is where he is heading.

    And in case anyone hasn’t seen this, I think this Democratic ad, more than anything else, explains why mainstream Americans are turning off Trump in droves. Nothing to do with politics or ideology often, but rather what one commentator called standards of “common decency”.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrX3Ql31URA

  39. “He need take only Ohio and Pennsylvania away from Hillary Clinton.”

    If we take the 2012 map and give Trump Ohio and PA he would only have 247. RCP has Clinton up 9 points in PA.
    There is a path to victory for Trump without PA but it involves NH, NV, Iowa and all the other main swing states (Ohio, FL etc). This assumes Virgina is now Blue, which seems to be the general consensus.

  43. The current makeup of the US electorate for a General Election (as opposed to 438 individual House of Representative, or 100 Senate seats) means that women, young people, Blacks and Hispanics form a monolithic voting coalition that cannot be surmounted by any Republican candidate, certainly not one running against Hillary Clinton.

    The current polarised nature of US politics probably excludes an Electoral College clean sweep, but the popular vote % will be high, over 50% to Clinton and the Democrats to somewhere below 45% for Trump (allowing some % for the other candidates) in my view, because of the following factors:

    • the lack of compulsory voting in the Presidential Election
    • the high likelihood of an effective ‘get out the vote’ campaign by the much more sophisticated, engaged and experienced Clinton team
    • the ‘bandwagon’ effect, much more of a force in the US, where voters identify with ‘winners’
    • the fact that near 55% of those who vote in US Presidential Elections are women
    • the potentially demoralised Trump Republican campaign leading to right wing voters not bothering to show up on Election day
    • the ‘solid’ Republican vote being locked up in small Southern and Mid Western states with high % Republican voting blocs, but no translation into anywhere near enough Electoral College votes to win the election.

    All of these factors, in my view, point to a crushing victory for Hillary Clinton, and her coat tails are likely to bring a Senate majority back for the Democrats, perhaps even a House of Representatives majority as well. Remember where you heard it, comrades.

    The other factor to consider as a plus for the Democrats (and something that the Republicans couldn’t leverage for McCain in 2008) is that incumbent President Obama will be out stumping for her during the campaign in 2016, as he has a vested interest in tying her as close as possible to his ‘legacy.’ ObamaCare is his single real legislative achievement, and Clinton fully supports this policy, indeed it was her version of Healthcare reform in the early 90’s that almost derailed Bill Clinton’s Presidency.

    Trump is incapable of controlling his verbal outbursts, unable to keep track of the lies he tells on an hourly basis, and he is wholly unfit to be anywhere near any executive office, let alone the US Presidency, and the American people, however dumb, are not yet dumb enough to elect such a buffoon to the most powerful position in the world. The exasperated and now desperate members of the Republican Party, finally seeing that Trump is beyond redemption as a viable candidate, are running from him as if from a plague victim, hoping that distancing themselves from his toxic candidacy will minimise the now inevitable losses in the US Congress and the various state Gubernatorial contests on November 8th.

    While Clinton’s ‘unfavourability’ ratings continue to remain high, hers are tracking well below Trump’s increasingly huge negative ratings, and her numbers are more a function of that fact that everyone has already got an opinion about her (as she is the best known candidate to run for the Presidency since Eisenhower in 1952) than any real indicator that she cannot electorally compete against the looney Trump. Given it is really a two horse race, the voters will have to make a choice, and even if they don’t vote for Clinton with any great enthusiasm, the prospect of a Trump Presidency is sure to get out the vote, even if it is primarily to stop him becoming President.

    Hillary Clinton will win the Presidency in a landslide, and Donald Trump will be a risible footnote in history.

  44. steve777 @ #41 Thursday, August 18, 2016 at 11:21 am

    Michael Moore believes Donald Trump never intended to actually win: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/donald-trump-never-wanted-to-win-michael-moore-20160817-gqv5di.html

    steve777 @ #41 Thursday, August 18, 2016 at 11:21 am

    Michael Moore believes Donald Trump never intended to actually win: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/donald-trump-never-wanted-to-win-michael-moore-20160817-gqv5di.html

    Michael Moore also just recently stated that trump would win. I think we can dismiss him as someone providing an informative view. His motive are elsewhere.
    http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

  45. LWP
    “This assumes Virgina is now Blue, which seems to be the general consensus.”
    Virginia is solid Blue this time around because Trump is turning off educated white voters that might otherwise vote Republican. The underlying demographics of Virginia were already trending Democrat. Trump has pushed Virginia into the Dem column.

  46. ToorakToff
    “Drumpf seems to be hanging on grimly in Iowa and it’s fairly tight in Ohio and Florida in some polls.
    He’s well ahead in redneck states.”
    Trump is struggling even in Georgia and Arizona, though narrowly ahead. It would be astounding if Hillary won either state, but the fact that they’re in play at all must be a shock to the GOP.
    As for Iowa… I doubt it’s competitive. I’d be very surprised if Hillary was so far ahead in most of the swing states but not in Iowa.

  47. I’ve seen comments relating to Trump dropping out and being replaced by another candidate,

    How would a new candidate be able to get their name on the ballot in enough states?

  48. barney in saigon @ #47 Saturday, August 20, 2016 at 9:57 am

    I’ve seen comments relating to Trump dropping out and being replaced by another candidate,
    How would a new candidate be able to get their name on the ballot in enough states?

    Not sure when the cut-off is on the ballot, it most likely varies from state to state, but even with a “write in” candidate it’s a moot point. I think Trump dropping out would effectively mean the republican’s conceding the presidency. I’d guess their focus would then be on on saving the furniture in house. In particular, hanging onto the senate majority.
    Having said that, I think Trump will carry on.

  49. work to rule @ #48 Saturday, August 20, 2016 at 3:26 pm

    barney in saigon @ #47 Saturday, August 20, 2016 at 9:57 am

    I’ve seen comments relating to Trump dropping out and being replaced by another candidate,
    How would a new candidate be able to get their name on the ballot in enough states?

    Not sure when the cut-off is on the ballot, it most likely varies from state to state, but even with a “write in” candidate it’s a moot point. I think Trump dropping out would effectively mean the republican’s conceding the presidency. I’d guess their focus would then be on on saving the furniture in house. In particular, hanging onto the senate majority.
    Having said that, I think Trump will carry on.

    Cheers WtR,
    I posed the question to an American I work with, he had no idea and thought that the save the furniture option was most likely.
    He’s quite, (extremely for an American,) progressive and supported Sanders. A couple of months ago he was leaning to vote Greens but now is firmly a Clinton voter as he has come to realise that Trump must be stopped at all cost,

  50. Being a longtime Poll Bludger casting an absentee ballot in this election, I’ve expended many hundreds of hours attempting to comprehend the reasons why as,well as the impacts of the Republican Party’s choosing such a “unique” Presidential nominee. In my lifetime Trump’s uniqueness was matched only by Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater who was soundly defeated by LBJ in 1964. Goldwater’s defining moment was the pronouncement in his Convention speech : “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

    My prediction for the Electoral College tally is that it will be closer than either of Obama’s victories, with Clinton barely above 3oo EVs after losing Iowa, North Carolina and Ohio mainly due to the high percentage of evangelicals/non-college white voters in those states. If Trump also wins Florida (he defeated local Senator Rubio there emphatically), then Clinton will squeak into office with no hope of the Senate confirming a Supreme Court nominee as Progressive as either of Obama’s appointments.

    For the Senate, I will have the pleasure of choosing between two Democrats in November because California has adopted a primary election process in which all candidates are lumped together regardless of party and then the top two vote-getters qualify for the general election. Goes to show how solidly Democratic that California has become as a consequence of its significant increase in the percentage of Mexican-American voters —- nearly half the state’s population now having Hispanic surnames.

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