Presidential election tracker: Clinton 47.1, Trump 45.3

17 comments on “Presidential election tracker: Clinton 47.1, Trump 45.3”

1. It looks as if the whole race may come down to New Hampshire!!!

2. I am extremely nervous now. It’s becoming a lot more exciting than I was hoping it would be. Even if Hillary gets over the line, the likelihood of the Dems winning the Senate is slipping away.

3. DTT
   Apparently Obama is scheduled to campaig in NH on the last day. No early voting?

4. Your map is what the US media is calling Clinton’s firewall. I make it 273 EVs, but perhaps you’re giving Trump one of Maine’s districts.

   It’s unlikely she’ll lose any of those states. The most competitive are still the must-wins for Trump. Florida, North Carolina, Nevada. Early voting looks good for Clinton in Nevada.

5. Yes David, I’m giving Trump one of the Maine districts.

6. I posted in comments on October 27th (BEFORE the news about the emails) “State based polls indicate Trump is now back in very serious contention in NC, Florida and Nevada. If he gets these it will be 272-266. He needs one more state. That looks difficult, I think Colorado is his best shot.”
   This has now been borne out and I believe he is more likely than not to carry these states and get to 266. He still has a major problem in getting any further however. He has about half a dozen possibilities but he is not favoured in any of them:

   1. Colorado: pulling level here now, but the problem is that Colorado is mostly by postal vote and at least half the electorate had already voted by the email announcement
   2. Pennsylvania: Closing but still about 3-4 points behind in the polls – his hope here is that the polls are wrong based on shy Trump upscale white voters in the Philadelphia suburbs and among blacks. Polling models using 2012 turnout (ie higher black, and lower working class white than I’d expect in 2016) are the other reason they could be off.
   3. New Hampshire: One new poll has just put Trump ahead but all others have had him behind. My gut feeling is that the greater exposure of Clinton’s scandals in the past week could have more impact here due to the “proper” (as opposed to deplorable) small ‘c’ conservative nature of the state.
   4. Michigan: Nate Silver claims that demographically this should be better for Trump than Pennsylvania but it hasn’t received nearly as much attention. Similar polling issues to PA may be an issue here (but less so with upscale whites).
   5. Wisconsin: Similar to the Philadelphia suburbs, Trump has had problems with the Republican base in Milwaukee. The emails could help consolidation here, but extensive early voting might negate this. I think this culturally moderate state is less of a chance than the 4 listed above.
   New Mexico and Virginia are the only other realistic opportunities to breach the firewall, but either would be a major upset. While Virginia now looks like it might come as close as 2-3 points, Trump winning there just doesn’t seem realistic to me.

   A factor assisting Trump is that three of these firewall states (Pennsylvania, Michigan & New Hampshire) states have only very limited early voting, partly negating the ground game & cash advantage of the Clinton machine.

7. Interesting research here on the “Shy Trump voter: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/poll-shy-voters-trump-230667

   It doesn’t appear that they have studied the possibility of shy Black Trump voters, which I believe could be a sleeper issue given the large discrepancy on this issue between automated and phone polling.
   The conclusions of the article do not seem to align with the (to me) quite significant results (especially as they might relate to Philadelphia and Milwaukee). Here is the key extract from the article:

   “In phone interviews, likely voters with a college degree said they support Clinton by a 21-point margin, 60 percent to 39 percent. But online, that margin shrunk to just 7 points, 53 percent to 46 percent.
   Similarly, among likely voters in households earning more than $50,000 annually, Clinton leads by 10 points over the phone, 54 percent to 44 percent. The candidates run neck-and-neck among these voters online, however: 50 percent for Trump, and 49 percent for Clinton.”

8. Peter K

   Thanks for a good analysis

   I agree about those states. I think Trump will win Florida, Ohio, Iowa and probably NC. (RCP agrees in no Toss ups). So essentially it all rests with NH.

   At least if the polls are correct the other states you listed are pretty safe for Clinton.
   However I note your “shy” effects.

   I guess we will know in a few days.

9. The news gets better for Clinton in Nevada. Election analyst Jon Ralston sees a clear Democratic advantage on early voting. He has the Democrats certain to pick up one House seat with a likely second gain as well. (That would flip Nevada’s delegation from 3-1 GOP to 3-1 Dem.) The Democrats are also favoured to win the open Senate seat.

   http://www.ktnv.com/news/ralston/the-nevada-early-voting-blog

10. In phone interviews, likely voters with a college degree said they support Clinton by a 21-point margin, 60 percent to 39 percent. But online, that margin shrunk to just 7 points, 53 percent to 46 percent.
    Similarly, among likely voters in households earning more than $50,000 annually, Clinton leads by 10 points over the phone, 54 percent to 44 percent. The candidates run neck-and-neck among these voters online, however: 50 percent for Trump, and 49 percent for Clinton.

    All I get from that is that there’s a lot of astroturfing going on in support of Trump. Which is certainly no surprise. Problem is, foreign-based astroturfers don’t get to cast a vote in the actual election, and local astroturfers still only get one vote even if they have 20 different Facebook/Twitter/whatever accounts all out trolling for Trump.

    Face it, if you have to rely on mythical “shy” voters for your pathway to victory, you’ve already lost.

    What I’d like to know is how phone-based pollsters handle married households. I can certainly imagine cases where they ring a house, the husband picks up, and replies “yes, my wife and I are both voting for Trump”. The pollster records +2 votes for Trump, but on election day the wife votes for Clinton because being a female Trump voter is about as logically coherent as being a black KKK member.

    Do pollsters ask about entire households, or just the individual who picks up the phone? Even the latter case is potentially problematic in the same way, if there’s a bias in terms of male head-of-households answering unsolicited calls more frequently than their female partners.

11. Is the Utah margin against Clinton (3rd place) or McMullin (2nd place)?

    There is an estimate that polling suggests McMullin could have as high as an almost 40% chance of taking Utah.

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/polls-may-be-underestimating-evan-mcmullins-chances-in-utah/

12. Clinton still on track to win in Florida & Pennsylvania.
    That is all she needs, as without them Trump is done & dusted.
    Whether she has a Barely working senate on her side is moot as far as i can see.
    Whatever the outcome just consider this when we see how she jumps on the geopolitical stage:
    http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/gaius-publius/69652/robert-kennedy-jr-syria-is-another-pipeline-war

13. Nate Silver on November 3rd:

    Clinton’s so-called firewall is not very robust. If you’re only ahead in exactly enough states to win the Electoral College, and you’d lose if any one of them gets away, that’s less of a firewall and more of a rusting, chain-link fence.

    It’s a pathetic performance from Hillary Clinton. If Bernie Sanders were the nominee he would be heading towards a comfortable win. But Democrats had to second-guess themselves and nominate their weakest candidate. It looks like Hillary Clinton will scrape through with very little trust from the public, major credibility and integrity problems, and a crappy agenda that won’t improve life for anyone except her Wall Street base.
    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-why-clintons-position-is-worse-than-obamas/

14. Just over on Five Thirty-Eight
    Three national tracking polls – ABC, USC and IBD have stopped trending to Trump and turned back to Clinton. Only a point in each case, but the fact that all three have done so in unison is a possible indicator that the FBI-induced bleeding has stopped.

15. [If Bernie Sanders were the nominee he would be heading towards a comfortable win]

    After a lifetime of watching politics – and especially great hopes burn out their political capital one after the other – there is nothing more painfully silly to read than someone indulging in alternative realities that can never be tested because a different path was chosen.

16. major credibility and integrity problems

    I don’t understand how Clinton can have this over some e-mails while Trump apparently doesn’t despite multiple bankruptcies, a history of stiffing contractors and employees, pending litigation over operating a shambolic business, a treasure-chest of sexist, racist, and islamophobic remarks, zero transparency on matters such as his personal tax returns and related financial dealings, and a solid and well-documented record of saying things that are blatantly false.

    People are fucking stupid if they think Clinton is the one with the integrity and credibility problems.

17. If Bernie wanted to be the nominee his campaign could have convinced more voters to vote for him.