Category: US Politics

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump square off for the first presidential election debate this morning our time, so it seems an opportune moment for another run of my national polling tracker. The recent trend is very clear, but Clinton retains a lead of 46.0% to 45.0%. This was done using the polling data aggregated at Huffington Post, by calculating bias adjustments, applying crude weightings to pollsters based on experience and performance, determining an “others” trend from those polls that published results for other candidates, and then determining trends for the major candidates’ shares of the non-others vote.

A new thread for discussion of the US presidential election campaign. Here is an update of the poll tracker I last run a fortnight ago. Hillary Clinton is now at 46.7%, down from 47.7%, while Donald Trump is up from 38.5% to 41.4%.

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”.

It’s a big day in the presidential primaries process, with Democratic and Republican primaries to be held in the fourth largest state, New York. The state has long been seen as a stronghold for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and while Bernie Sanders has been narrowing the gap somewhat against Clinton, a win for him would be a very major boilover. Here’s a thread for discussion of the news as it unfolds.

Another week, another dedicated thread for presidential election discussion. Since we last met, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won big in Arizona and lost big in Utah, with Bernie Sanders also trouncing Clinton in Idaho. The Democrats have got Washington (101 delegates), Hawaii (25) and Alaska (16) on the weekend, whereas the Republicans have nothing doing until Wisconsin on April 5.

After a week that saw Marco Rubio drop out of the Republican race, Donald Trump winning an emphatic victory in Florida on top of narrower wins in Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina, Republican also-ran John Kasich scoring what will probably be his only win in his home state of Ohio, and Hillary Clinton enjoying a clean sweep over Bernie Sanders in all the aforesaid states, here’s a new thread for discussion of the ongoing US presidential election campaign.

Depending on how you calculate the time difference, we’re now just a day out from “Super Tuesday”, in which American voters across 14 states will more than likely settle the question of who will contest the presidential election in November. Following on from the early rounds in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, Super Tuesday will see both parties conduct their primaries and caucuses in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, with the Republicans adding Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming to the list. As a Washington Post explainer puts it, this entails “a combination of a dozen races with a dozen set of rules with another dozen set of exceptions”.

Pundits now seem of one mind that this process will set the seal on a presdiential election contest in November between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump’s indestructibility might encourage skepticism about what pundits say, but the trends on both sides have been clear enough from the early primaries. The Republicans’ Iowa caucuses produced a close contest between the three front-runners, Trump, Ted Cruz and Mario Rubio, in which Cruz emerged narrowly ahead, but Trump has since won clear victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

Polls indicate Ted Cruz will carry his own state of Texas tomorrow, and apparently also that Cruz should win Arkansas and Ben Carson should win Colorado, but the rest looks like a cakewalk for Trump. Hillary Clinton’s road has been bumpier than anticipated, but her loss to Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire is now balanced by victories and Iowa, Nevada and a particularly emphatic win in South Carolina yesterday. Reflecting the strength in New England that was demonstrated by his win in New Hampshire, Sanders looks set to carry Massachusetts and his home state of Vermont, but barely looks competitive anywhere else.

If you’re a Crikey subscriber, you can observe my reading of the situation here, which concludes thus:

I don’t see any reason to bet against the view shared by FiveThirtyEight and the RealClearPolitics state polling averages: that Obama will win the electoral college 303 to 235, carrying Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada, while falling short in Florida and North Carolina.