Presidential election tracker: Clinton 47.8, Trump 43.7

After all but closing the gap in the lead-up to last week’s debate, national poll aggregation now finds Donald Trump on more familiar ground.

I’ll be making updates of my presidential election poll tracker a regular Tuesday thing from now until the big day on November 8, five weeks from today. The last week of movement captures Hillary Clinton’s bounce from the debate and the residue of Donald Trump’s erratic form in its wake, with Clinton up from 46.0% to 47.8% and Trump down from 45.0% to 43.7%.

2016-10-04-us-tracker

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.

128 comments on “Presidential election tracker: Clinton 47.8, Trump 43.7”

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  2. Thanks A R. As it turns out, the accusation that Alica Machado (the woman Trump tried to demean) had a sex tape might be false. Trump, on the other hand…

  3. Kakuru, I’m not interested in Trumps porno flicks. I’d rather discuss the policy issues thanks.

    William, from the link you provided (from US government mouthpiece Radio Free Europe):
    The ICTY replied:
    “The Trial Chamber of the Karadzic case found, at paragraph 3460, page 1303, of the Trial Judgement, that ‘there was no sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milosevic agreed with the common plan’ [to create territories ethnically cleansed of non-Serbs]. The Trial Chamber found earlier in the same paragraph that ‘Milosevic provided assistance in the form of personnel, provisions and arms to Bosnian Serbs during the conflict’.”

    The main charge against Milosevic was that of Ethnic Cleansing. According to this article the tribunal found that there was insufficient evidence that he knew about it. That sounds like NOT GUILTY to me. If he didn’t know about the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, it stands to reason he didn’t know about Srebrenica also. Karadzic was from the Serbian Democratic Party, who were actually a rival party to Milisovics’ Socialists. In fact the two parties fought a civil war during the 1940’s. They were allied in fighting the US/EU/NATO orchestrated breakup of Bosnia from Yugoslavia, but he didn’t control them.

  5. Peterk, the key words here are the “Karadzic case”. How can Milosevic have been “exonerated”, or found “NOT GUILTY”, in a judgement that wasn’t considering charges against him? If you were willing to stretch truth to breaking point, you might try to make out that it “vindicated” him. But the quote that has Neil Clark, John Pilger and yourself so excited is simply a reformulation of the International Court of Justice’s finding in 2007. It too acknowledged a lack of evidence to tie Milosevic to the actions of the Bosnian Serb military, but nonetheless found him to be in breach of the Genocide Convention. If the finding that Milosevic breached the Genocide Convention sounds like “NOT GUILTY” to you, well, good luck to you.

  6. Peterk, if you think that Assad is not a first class war criminal and mass perpetrator of crimes against humanity, there is no point in having a dialogue with you. You are nothing but an apologist for another first class war criminal, Vladimir Putin.

  7. Love the way Trump supporters can gloss over the things they don’t like about him by saying “he has to say that”.

    He has said lots of contradictory things on just about every subject, take your pick from the buffet of whatever appeals to you.

    And you know how he will make America great if he is elected… he will just say so (probably as soon as his victory speech).

    Public address systems will echo from every corner “America is great again”.

  9. You’d think that, wouldn’t you. I’m shooting to have something fairly comprehensive on the election up over the weekend, but I won’t be reporting on any polling until something actually gets published.

  10. This article is a good one:

    http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-election/i-dont-like-hillary-clinton-or-the-democratic-party–im-voting-for-them-anyway-20161006-grwvo0.html

    I don’t agree with her about Hillary Clinton, but it argues the case, which I would have thought self-evident, about why genuine Sanders supporters who won’t vote for Clinton are mad. The anecdote of her experience outside the Trump rally is telling when compared to the rise of Hitler, Mussolini and other supremacist demagogues.

  11. TPOF
    Powerful stuff. I’ve heard quite a few Bernie-or-Bust types express similar sentiments to Annabel Park. Once their rage died down, they took the pragmatic view that the only way to stop Trump is to vote for Hillary.
    As the election gets closer, most “undecided voters” are calving off to Hillary. A large proportion of these appear to be disillusioned Democrat voters, but I don’t have the precise stats.

  12. The Florida hurricane will impact the election one way or another.
    It could favor Trump if turnout is affected in Democrat areas, or it could favor the Obama/Hillary nexus when Obama engages with the area to assist with storm damage etc.

  13. Trog
    if there is an evacuation mess up like with Katrina it could impact on either side.

    More to the point will be when and how the candidates tour the site. this could make them look fantastic or interfering buffoons, caring or cold.

  14. Trump could do what he did in Baton Rouge after the Louisiana flood. Stand next to a random truck delivering aid, and claim credit based on his (non-existent) charity.

  15. DTT

    All of these are possible. On the pro side, Obama’s polls are excellent at the moment and anything that allows him to shine could also set the scene when it comes time for him to further endorse Hillary.

  17. I suspect that nothing will underline more the diference between Obama and Dubbya Bush than how Obama will respond to the curren hurricane. Katrina exposed the disingenuous claims of the republicans “caring” for the poor.

  18. Here’s an article written by Seymour Hersh in 2007 !! which details the efforts of Cheney and the Saudis leading to the rise of Sunni extremists (read ISIS) in Iraq and Syria as a way of countering the Iranian led “Shiite Crescent”. The Syrian oposition groups were US/ Saudi funded even back then and the “popular uprising” in Syria was choreographed well in advance with the Syrian Contras already waiting in the wings. So on whose hands does the blood of the Syrian war rest?http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection

  19. Back to the US Election.
    At the moment I read it like this: Trump is ahead in all the states Romney won except North Carolina. He’s also leading Iowa and Ohio, which were won by Obama and in Maine’s 2nd congressional district. This gives him 216 EC Votes. Clinton leads in all the rest having pulled ahead in Florida (29), North Carolina(15) and Nevada (6) since the first debate. These three states worth 50 votes are still very much in play. Should Trump win them the result will be Clinton 272 – Trump 266.
    In other words, Trump cant afford to miss either NC or Florida and even so, will still be one state short – with that last state being a lot harder for him.
    His best chance seems to be Colorado (9), where his just drew even on the eve of the first debate, but now seems to have dropped a long way back. New Hampshire (4) seems the next best bet with a poll just out showing him only 2 points behind, but it’s probably rogue. Other than that, he will have to break through in one of the rustbelt states: Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin.

  20. Peterk,

    This is how I see it. Americans aren’t as stupid as Australians, because their media isn’t as concentrated or as brain dead.

    Trump has no chance, never will, never did.

    He is just like Turnbull, who tries to appeal to any idiot who will swallow his 24 faces. The difference in America, is that the media isn’t as stupid.

  21. You can put down your glasses. The US election is over.
    There is no coming back for Trump after the leak of these revolting sexist comments from 1995 in a leaked audio/video to the Washington Post. It’s been exciting in a most undesirable kind of way, but nothing now will enable Trump to be president.

  23. Hate to be the one to pose the question, but how are these latest comments going to deter anybody apart from those who were never going to vote for Trump anyway?

  24. Wrong question Itsthevibe. This is not about his hardcore supporters who may well have a good ol’ chortle upon watching the tape. This is about married women who have been ambivalent about Trump but whose husbands up till now had persuaded them Trump was better than Clinton; this is about wavering evangelicals worried more about the Supreme Court than the character of the president; this is about a whole host of undecided voters for whom this is surely the last straw. So this is most definitely a political blow of mega proportions; even Frank Luntz the GOP pollster is saying this is highly damaging.

  25. And just to state the obvious: of course those who were never going to vote Trump will only have their position confirmed, as if anyone really doubted the man is a complete disgrace.

  29. From David Letterman:
    “I don’t know anything about politics,” Letterman said. “I don’t know anything about trade agreements. I don’t know anything about China devaluing the yuan. But if you see somebody who’s not behaving like any other human you’ve known, that means something. They need an appointment with a psychiatrist. They need a diagnosis and they need a prescription.”

  30. Hillary Clinton:

    I mean, politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/wikileaks-appears-to-release-hillary-clintons-paid-speech-tr?utm_term=.hr0zn7YD9#.nhxZvVejD

    This reminds me of Tony Abbott saying that he has his written remarks and his spontaneous remarks, and only the former should be taken seriously.

    It’s obvious that Hillary Clinton’s “private positions” are very different from the public shifts in rhetoric that she had to make to win narrowly against Bernie Sanders with 55% of the pledged delegates allocated via electoral contests to Sanders’ 45%. That’s close, especially given that Sanders was long dismissed as a fringe candidate who wouldn’t be competitive. If Clinton hadn’t adopted those public shifts in the direction of where Sanders, Warren, and most Democrats are today, she would have lost. So the TPP will most likely be signed by a President Clinton despite her “public position” of opposing it since last year after strenuously advocating it for many years. I think we can forget about any concrete and significant changes to inequality of wealth and regulation of the financial and corporate sectors.

  31. Nicholas, it has not been confirmed that those quotes are true. Shouldn’t there be a smartphone recording or two of these speeches?

  32. she complains about the need for politicians to avoid conflicts of interest.
    “There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives,” she said during a speech to Goldman Sachs, according to the leaked email. “You know, the divestment of assets, the stripping of all kinds of positions, the sale of stocks. It just becomes very onerous and unnecessary.”

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/07/leaked-podesta-emails-show-bernie-was-right.html

  33. Hillary Clinton thinks that financial sector elites know best about how to regulate themselves. That approach has worked so well.

    In another excerpt, Clinton says those who work inside a regulated industry are best poised to then regulate the industry. Too much or too little regulation is bad, she says, and those who understand the right balance are often in the industry.
    “How do you get to the golden key, how do we figure out what works? And the people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry,” she allegedly said.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/07/leaked-podesta-emails-show-bernie-was-right.html

  34. As Alias said, hard core Trump campaigners like Nicholas will never admit their candidate’s faults, and will continue to do their job and argue for their man. (I assume nobody would do such a thing without being paid for it, or hoping to be). But the latest Trump expose tape is already causing The Donald quite a bit of damage amongst neutral females, and importantly will strongly motivate Clinton’s base to get out and vote. Nate Silver chronicles the shift so far:
    http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo
    He also speculates on where this is trending.
    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-bottom-could-fall-out-for-trump/?ex_cid=2016-forecast
    Personally I am not surprised by the tape comments. Between that, his “charity”, and an alleged case involving a young girl, I frankly do not understand why Trump is not already under investigation by relevant authorities. At least a few journos are doing their jobs now, and it makes a difference. So kudos David Fahrenthold
    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-bottom-could-fall-out-for-trump/?ex_cid=2016-forecast

  36. hard core Trump campaigners like Nicholas will never admit their candidate’s faults

    He is not my candidate and I do not suppose him. You are dishonest or cretinous or both.

  40. Thanks Cat,
    I enjoy mass psychology, it is a natural extension of psephology if you ask me.

    It would be nice to understand the individual psychology of people who say they don’t support Trump, and then spend most of their time hammering Hillary (as well as those who say they don’t support the L-NP, but spend most of their time hammering Shorten).

  42. In any other country, at any other time, the stuff that has come out about Trump would have any other candidate withdrawing and hiding under a rock for years. I reckon Donald will double down and push on, with the next debate to go the full nasty. Its a very sad state of affairs but i’m hoping that Trump has finally buggered himself completely.

    Of course the RWNJobbies are happy either way. 🙂 Either they get Trump as POTUS, OR they have bulk material to feed conspiracy theories for years.

  44. Trump is certainly going to come under a lot of pressure in coming days to walk away. Is there a plausible scenario that could see him make an exit though? I guess one possibility is that the polls could tank in the coming days, to the extent that it becomes apparent, even to those close to him and even to him, that he is completely toast and facing a thrashing. Under that scenario, he could claim that he has no chance without the support of senior Republicans, blame them for his need to quit and in true Trump style absolve himself of blame for his situation. But I suspect that he is not for turning, and when he inevitably loses, he will blame everyone else, claim the elections were rigged, and so on and so on.

    My hope is that over the next few weeks, the Republicans now tare themselves apart and that this flows on to Congress. This of course would be the best possible result for those who are concerned about Clinton walking away from some of the promises she made through to win the primaries.

  45. Trump is certainly going to come under a lot of pressure in coming days to walk away.

    Doesn’t matter. Even if he did walk away, it’s too late at this point for it to affect the outcome. The deadline for appearing on the presidential ballot has passed, and early/absentee voting has already opened in several states. There’s no taking Trump’s name off the ballot, and no putting someone else’s name on as the GOP candidate.

    Even if Trump were to suddenly grow a conscience and quit the race tomorrow, I’m pretty sure the American electorate would still be asked to vote for him in November because his name is already on all the ballots.

  48. People who are saying that what Trump said was just locker room banter or who are condemning it for it’s ‘vulgarity’ are ignoring the part where he says that he grabs women’s genitals against their will and without asking for consent.

    Trump is finished. His brand is poison. He has lost the swing vote. Not everything comes down to leadership though. Those who support the Republican party in spite of it’s presidential candidate may still support him, but he’s well and truly done.

    A landslide of Republican party elders have already rescinded support for Trump following the release of the tapes. They are rats running from a sinking ship. 35 at last count. This is a mass exodus. It’s become in their political and professional interest to distance themselves.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/08/donald-trump-list-of-republicans-reject-support-endorsement

  49. I don’t think you know how communication works Nicholas.

    You might have mentioned that you don’t support Trump, but the bulk of what you have posted on this thread makes that seem insincere.

    You call yourself a lefty, and then spend the bulk of your time complaining about the candidate that is further to the left, even suggesting that voting for the candidate further to the right will create a more lefty outcome.

    This is a blog and people have their bullshit detectors set on high.

    You have spewed forth reams of anti-Hillary posts and then called Socrates a cretin for calling you a Trump campaigner. Either you are a Trump campaigner, or you are deluded about how you come across.

  50. This is the problem all republicans are facing:
    Though it seemed in Saturday’s whirlwind that nearly all elected Republican leaders had renounced their support of Trump, though, the vast majority are still behind him. That’s because the vast majority of Republican voters are, too, and those who represent them are inviting political trouble for themselves if they appear to be abetting the election of Hillary Clinton.

    So, does the representative show some moral courage or go along with the lack of same in their support base? What a predicament!

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