Monday, August 22, 2016

Polling Update #12: Slight Tightening

This week has seen the race merge back into being a closer affair as Clinton’s last week lead of 6.8% in the RCP average has now shrunk to 5.5%. She leads 47% to 41.5%. This is about where we thought the polling would be headed last week and it has arrived.  To put matters into perspective Obama’s win in 2012 was by 3.9% and, because of his Electoral College tally, his victory was considered fairly robust. 

Still, it is interesting that when Trump is not actively lighting himself on fire, which he was able to avoid this week, things can improve for him slightly. The question is how long can he avoid setting himself on fire. (Just this morning he attacked the Morning Joe show hosts in very personal and inflammatory terms.) 

As he tightens the race, Trump makes gains primarily among those who were more likely to be pre-disposed to vote for him. In other words, Trump gets closer by making gains with Romney voters. Whether he can then make gains with Obama voters to win is a whole different argument. 

The race is in fact closer this week, so we will stay on it.  




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The Scorecard is a political strategy and analysis blog. Our hope is to provide information and insight that can be found nowhere else into how and why things are happening in American politics. Unlike many political pundits, we will tell you who we think is going to win as an election approaches; we will tell you why; and we will give you a sense of our level of confidence. Ours is a holistic approach, one that takes in as many numbers as possible but is also willing to look past the numbers if need be. When we turn out to have been wrong, we will let you know. When we are right, we’ll let you know that too.

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Author Jason Paul is a longtime political operative who got his start as an intern in 2002. He has been a political forecaster for almost as long. He won the 2006 Swing State Project election prediction contest and has won two other local contests. He had the pulse of Obama-Clinton race in 2008 and has been as good as anyone at delegate math in the 2016 race. He looks forwards to providing quality coverage for the remainder of the 2016 race.